CATIII, I find it hard to disagree with most of what you say, apart from the DDOS bit.
This wasn't an external problem, but appears to be an internal problem with one of the VMs hosting a webserver.
To be fair to IB, the site IS on new platforms (and more platforms with load balancing), and it "should" be better able to cater for a larger number than before, more reliably than before.
Well it has bumped up the numbers but not, it seems, the reliability.
Before it was moved to IB, the servers were struggling with 3000 at one time - now it's about 3 times that.
The downside is that there's some issues about the version of
VB it's running, and bespoke code that adds certain functionality, and other problems, so it is more "delicate" than anyone (IB, admins, mods, users) would like.
Also, it is just one of many sites IB run - by far the busiest, but still can't be nursed 24/7 like Danny and Rob did.
I don't know what the future holds - the hope is that there will be a concerted effort to improve reliability (perhaps in tandem with a
VB upgrade and site overhaul) as this is in everyone's interest.
However, I suspect that there is likely to be some pain to come.
SD