Shutdown of SYD-1 Australia Server

[Gunnar Lindahl]

Dear all,

For reference the global release on what changes are coming to FSD servers is here: https://www.vatsim.net/news/current-and-future-changes-vatsim-fsd-servers

First of all, I can say confidently that there was no disrespect to anyone intended. Matt and his team have been slowly consolidating our FSD infrastructure over the past 12-18 months including the closure of other servers. Had we known what an emotive subject this would be we would of course had done more to re-assure our friends Down Under and in NZ prior to the change taking place. Most people will know this, but to be absolutely clear, all servers are inter-connected so the configuration has no bearing on what traffic you can see - I generally connect to SINGAPORE which is a throwback to the advent of AFV when we had connection restrictions during the launch period. 

The change was completed under the logic that it would not adversely affect user experience for the reasons outlined in the above announcement. If you are experiencing problems please send them to Matt using the method referenced in the link with as much detail as possible so that he and his team can investigate it. As of last night Matt hadn’t received anything - he needs data to investigate!

As mentioned above the plan very shortly is for all FSD servers to be removed user-side - all members will connect to one address and a load balancer will then automatically assign them the most suitable server. 

[Richard Quigley]

Mr. President, 

That is reasonably close to an apology.  Reasonably.

"Had we known what an emotive subject this would be we would of course had done more to re-assure our friends Down Under and in NZ prior to the change taking place."

It made a small change in how people connected to the network.  The technical differences were, except to a few, invisible.

The original question was " Why didn't you tell us this would/might happen before it happened?"   It would have taken far less of your time to have dashed off a notice than it has now taken to deal with the backlash. (I wrote one for you yesterday in able 90 seconds.)

Now, the "The change was completed under the logic that it would not adversely affect user experience." has not adversely effected ALL users but it has effected enough that questions have been raised.  The logic was faulty.  Another few minutes thought and all this might have been avoided.

The reactions to these questions recalls memories of the situation in which VATSIM found itself a couple of years ago (could have been more could have been less, memory stick faulty) when some of your "friends" Down Under were not feeling so friendly.

Edited April 30, 2020 at 09:50 PM by Richard Quigley

[Andreas Fuchs]

Gunnar, thanks for clarifying.

Richard, I cannot see any escalation. I asked a question, Sean misunderstood and took offence in it, I tried to explain it in more depth. Waiting for a reply for him. Obviously, I am not a good sender of messages.

[Richard Quigley]

1 minute ago, Andreas Fuchs said:

Obviously, I am not a good sender of messages.

Oh, you send a good message my friend!  Unfortunately, it was/is way off the topic or point if you will that Dan and I raised.

Gunnar has now mounted an apologia of sorts and while it's not a: "We're sorry guys, we blew it.  Should have given you a shout out before we pressed the button." it will have to do.

It's just that we would prefer to be treated like colleagues rather than subjects. 

[Ross Carlson]

17 hours ago, Simon Kelsey said:

Modern pilot clients smooth aircraft movement better than in the old days so you might be fooled in to thinking it's more frequent than that (although the cost of that smoothing is that even more delay is involved, so when you look at an aircraft using vPilot, for instance, you're actually seeing where it was at least 5-10 seconds in the past (because it needs a couple of position updates to be able to calculate the smoothing).

Not relevant to the OP, but slight correction here ... the delay is 5 seconds, not 5-10 seconds. It will never be more than 5. (Really, it's 5500 ms, to allow for up to 500 ms of jitter in the connection.) Speaking only for vPilot here.

Edited April 30, 2020 at 11:44 PM by Ross Carlson

[Daniel Mckee]

I agree with Richard, we have now received an acknowledgment of poor communication that is as good as it is going to get.  Moderators please close this topic now as it has assumed a life not related to my original post. Thankyou.

[John Arnold]

I am 'brand new' to Vatsim/Vatpac having put off setting up and joining as it looked a bit too difficult for me but although I am yet to participate in a flight controlled by ATC I have found it not so daunting as I expected and it is really great.

What I have noticed that while just 'sitting there' outside my aircraft watching the 'traffic' and listening to ATC sometimes nearby aircraft (parked nearby) disappear from where they were and then a second or two later they reappear. Would this be because I can't use the SRD server and have to use the Singapore server (I am located in Sydney) or is it caused by something else. I have a (average) 44Mbps internet connection and a fast PC and video card (i7-9700K RTX2060 OC 6gb).

[Matthew Bartels]

This is an unrelated issue happening on all servers. The tech team is working hard to figure out the cause but it's not one that seems to have any rhyme or reason to it, thus making it a bit more difficult to solve.