NOTAM site 'upgrade'
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The system monitors it by making an HTTP request (i.e requesting a web page) - as such it checks that web server process is serving requests rather than simple checking that the server is up. The check is done from a variety of servers, with connectivity to each being provided by different providers.
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The FAA have just issued an advisory circular with regard to the provision of NOTAM via the Internet, you can find it at
http://www.aopa.org/whatsnew/newsitems/2002/ac00-62.pdf
It includes, with reference to becoming a Qualified Internet Communications Provider (QICP) the following requirement:-
2. GENERAL. A person or organization that accomplishes and maintains the following as they pertain to the provider's facility (i.e., all hardware, software and Internet connectivity under the applicant’s direct control) may become an approved QICP:
a. Reliability means users are able to retrieve requested data from the provider with no outage lasting longer than 10 minutes, and no more than 30 minutes of total outages (including outages due to maintenance) in any continuous 3-month period.
b. Accessibility means turnaround time within the provider's facility. The provider should be capable of initiating transmission of requested data during transactions with 100% of its users within 2 minutes.
Nearly three months down the line Thales IS and NATS are nowhere near achieving this standard.
Mike
http://www.aopa.org/whatsnew/newsitems/2002/ac00-62.pdf
It includes, with reference to becoming a Qualified Internet Communications Provider (QICP) the following requirement:-
2. GENERAL. A person or organization that accomplishes and maintains the following as they pertain to the provider's facility (i.e., all hardware, software and Internet connectivity under the applicant’s direct control) may become an approved QICP:
a. Reliability means users are able to retrieve requested data from the provider with no outage lasting longer than 10 minutes, and no more than 30 minutes of total outages (including outages due to maintenance) in any continuous 3-month period.
b. Accessibility means turnaround time within the provider's facility. The provider should be capable of initiating transmission of requested data during transactions with 100% of its users within 2 minutes.
Nearly three months down the line Thales IS and NATS are nowhere near achieving this standard.
Mike
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drauk -
Could you point me towards any info on such systems, as I wasn't aware any bank was dumb enough to entrust that sort of thing to a web server?
Financial systems aren't on the WWW as a rule, and if your bank's one is... change banks! They are closed systems kept well away from the wilds of the internet, and cost huge amounts of money.
NATS certainly aren't going to invest in anything similar for a mere NOTAMS site. Seems to me the only reason they won't bring back the old A8 etc. is that they would lose face in doing so - modern British businesses seem far more interested in face-saving than getting the job done.
Think of the web based systems which, for example, transact billions of dollars worth of securities on a daily basis for the world's investment banks - do you think they'd do this if it couldn't be made reliable enough (for reasonable cost)?
Financial systems aren't on the WWW as a rule, and if your bank's one is... change banks! They are closed systems kept well away from the wilds of the internet, and cost huge amounts of money.
NATS certainly aren't going to invest in anything similar for a mere NOTAMS site. Seems to me the only reason they won't bring back the old A8 etc. is that they would lose face in doing so - modern British businesses seem far more interested in face-saving than getting the job done.
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Why do it if it's not fun?
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I used to work for a company which claimed to have the largest website in the world, in terms of dollars transacted per day.
The number of hits on the website was pretty low, though. Ok, so we may have traded several million dollars in a single transaction, but it only took a few of those transaction to start racking up the turnover figures. And reliability was obviously important, but not mission-critical, because our counterparties could phone us if the website went down. (Our disaster recovery procedures in the London office included disabling all of the UK-based products on the (US-based) website, and asking our counterparties to pick up the phone while we resolved some technical difficulties.)
If you want examples of high-reliability high-traffic websites, I suggest you look at sites such as Yahoo. Can't remember the last time I couldn't access Yahoo. It's traffic levels are far higher than the AIS pages, and it has a much larger database.
FFF
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The number of hits on the website was pretty low, though. Ok, so we may have traded several million dollars in a single transaction, but it only took a few of those transaction to start racking up the turnover figures. And reliability was obviously important, but not mission-critical, because our counterparties could phone us if the website went down. (Our disaster recovery procedures in the London office included disabling all of the UK-based products on the (US-based) website, and asking our counterparties to pick up the phone while we resolved some technical difficulties.)
If you want examples of high-reliability high-traffic websites, I suggest you look at sites such as Yahoo. Can't remember the last time I couldn't access Yahoo. It's traffic levels are far higher than the AIS pages, and it has a much larger database.
FFF
--------------
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If you want examples of high-reliability high-traffic websites, I suggest you look at sites such as Yahoo.
As for the idea that confidential information shouldn't be available to view over the web, e.g. financial info, that is a notion from history. Wake up, as they say, and smell the coffee.
QDM
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High reliability is routine these days, as are e-banking and share dealing websites etc. - www.schwab.com is a good example of one that routinely processes tens of millions of shares a day without problems. Nothing wrong with that, but it costs. A lot. For Amazon, Yahoo and any e-Banking/e-Trading business these costs are essential - no website, no business - but I suspect AIS would choke if you told them the cost of the hardware, software and people to do it. The problem is that we are now getting used to what a good eCommerce website can do, so we expect it all the time.
We had an interesting project going with FFF's former employer to feed their traders information in real-time, anyplace, anywhere and to process their response. Reliability was critical, as they it would cost them millions if a link went down and a trader was left holding options he didn't want, and the cost was well into 8 figures (USD, not Lira
). That's the sort of money Amazon et al. spend too....
We had an interesting project going with FFF's former employer to feed their traders information in real-time, anyplace, anywhere and to process their response. Reliability was critical, as they it would cost them millions if a link went down and a trader was left holding options he didn't want, and the cost was well into 8 figures (USD, not Lira
). That's the sort of money Amazon et al. spend too....
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At the risk of ruining your chips guys, please remember that the banks and Amazon(s) of this world have extremely reliable websites because of two very important reasons:
1. If they fall over you WILL go elsewhere
2. They transact through them, thereby making money (strongly linked to 1 above)
The Yahoo(s) and other "service" sites make money from advertising.
So, are NATS/AIS to sell us the NOTAMs to pay for the site?
Or are pop-up ads de-rigueur?
No.
Neither thanks.
Just SORT IT OUT!
Or roll back to known good.
Edited to add this:
(I appreciate that NATS is no longer "Government", per se)
BRL if this breaches copyright, please edit it out...
From Ananova:
GOVERNMENT WEBSITES UNDER FIRE
Ministers are being urged to suspend their £5 billion e-government programme amid claims that hundreds of official websites were experiencing "serious problems".
An independent survey of 20 "flagship" Government websites found that three-quarters needed "immediate attention" - with the Prime Minister's own site one of the worst offenders.
It warned that the Government's target of fully on-line government by 2005 was "not realistically achievable" and urged ministers to halt the web aspects of the programme while existing faults were rectified.
The 200-page review was commissioned by the Interactive Bureau - a website strategy and design agency - and the research carried out by Porter Research which also publishes an annual review of the FTSE-100 web sites.
It said that its findings were a "strong indication" that hundreds of Government and quasi-Government websites were in need of attention in one area or another.
The 10 Downing Street site was said to be "a mess - in need of a thorough overhaul from top to bottom".
"What is the point of the Prime Minister - the prime mover in bringing the Government to the people via the web - having a site which announces the opportunity for foreign journalists to ask him questions, yet gives no opportunity for members of the British Public to do so ?" the report complained.
It gave the website a score of just 40.75% - marginally higher than the Driver Vehicle and Licensing Agency which was rated the worst of the lot.
The Number 10 site scored so badly "because its navigation is inept, because of a lack of attention to detail, because it is poorly maintained, because the coding of it is of a low standard, because whole sections of it are inappropriately named, because of its slow speed of loading, because it does not work properly with some browsers - and because it allows no provision for members of the public to contact either the Prime Minister or his office".
In contrast, the best of the 20 sites surveyed - the Department for Education and Skills - scored 78.5%.
(c) Copyright Ananova Ltd 2002, all rights reserved.
1. If they fall over you WILL go elsewhere
2. They transact through them, thereby making money (strongly linked to 1 above)
The Yahoo(s) and other "service" sites make money from advertising.
So, are NATS/AIS to sell us the NOTAMs to pay for the site?
Or are pop-up ads de-rigueur?
No.
Neither thanks.
Just SORT IT OUT!
Or roll back to known good.
Edited to add this:
(I appreciate that NATS is no longer "Government", per se)
BRL if this breaches copyright, please edit it out...
From Ananova:
GOVERNMENT WEBSITES UNDER FIRE
Ministers are being urged to suspend their £5 billion e-government programme amid claims that hundreds of official websites were experiencing "serious problems".
An independent survey of 20 "flagship" Government websites found that three-quarters needed "immediate attention" - with the Prime Minister's own site one of the worst offenders.
It warned that the Government's target of fully on-line government by 2005 was "not realistically achievable" and urged ministers to halt the web aspects of the programme while existing faults were rectified.
The 200-page review was commissioned by the Interactive Bureau - a website strategy and design agency - and the research carried out by Porter Research which also publishes an annual review of the FTSE-100 web sites.
It said that its findings were a "strong indication" that hundreds of Government and quasi-Government websites were in need of attention in one area or another.
The 10 Downing Street site was said to be "a mess - in need of a thorough overhaul from top to bottom".
"What is the point of the Prime Minister - the prime mover in bringing the Government to the people via the web - having a site which announces the opportunity for foreign journalists to ask him questions, yet gives no opportunity for members of the British Public to do so ?" the report complained.
It gave the website a score of just 40.75% - marginally higher than the Driver Vehicle and Licensing Agency which was rated the worst of the lot.
The Number 10 site scored so badly "because its navigation is inept, because of a lack of attention to detail, because it is poorly maintained, because the coding of it is of a low standard, because whole sections of it are inappropriately named, because of its slow speed of loading, because it does not work properly with some browsers - and because it allows no provision for members of the public to contact either the Prime Minister or his office".
In contrast, the best of the 20 sites surveyed - the Department for Education and Skills - scored 78.5%.
(c) Copyright Ananova Ltd 2002, all rights reserved.
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The online banking sites mentioned here do not transact 'billions of dollars of securities on a daily basis'. They also fall over with regularity and occasionally have massive - and occasionally well publicised - security leaks. Hardly a good example. You have to realise there's a difference between stuff aimed at consumers and the behind-the-scenes systems that do the really big stuff between banks etc.
As mentioned the sort of server setups that people like Yahoo and Amazon have are way, way beyond anything that NATS could afford - or would want to provide. And even they fall over and get things wrong.
For a safety critical system like this the old text file download was great because there were so few points at which the information could end up with bits missing. NATS have put all the load on their own site, chopped up and hidden the data and put a hideous front end on it - when leaving the processing to the user of the data would make more sense - if only financially.
A few different servers offering the old text file download would have been an acceptable solution to reliability problems - the load on a small text file from a few thousand pilots every day is hardly going to stretch a single server let alone a cluster of them. But add your hideous front end with all of the processing required just to serve that, and the processing to muck about with the data... and deal with authenticating users... stick it all on a single box and watch it fall over. Madness really when the existing system worked so well.
As mentioned the sort of server setups that people like Yahoo and Amazon have are way, way beyond anything that NATS could afford - or would want to provide. And even they fall over and get things wrong.
For a safety critical system like this the old text file download was great because there were so few points at which the information could end up with bits missing. NATS have put all the load on their own site, chopped up and hidden the data and put a hideous front end on it - when leaving the processing to the user of the data would make more sense - if only financially.
A few different servers offering the old text file download would have been an acceptable solution to reliability problems - the load on a small text file from a few thousand pilots every day is hardly going to stretch a single server let alone a cluster of them. But add your hideous front end with all of the processing required just to serve that, and the processing to muck about with the data... and deal with authenticating users... stick it all on a single box and watch it fall over. Madness really when the existing system worked so well.
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rustle,
re Points 1 and 2, this is exactly the problem. A government monopoly leads to blind indifference to the needs of consumers and they've now made the problem worse by not publishing the A1 / A8 data anymore. If they opened up the field to competition with commercial providers, people would quite rightly go elsewhere, but as it is AIS just sits and delivers a crap, unacceptable service three months after launch. In the commercial world they would be out of business.
If they publish the data, I am sure that after all this furore someone would take the challenge and deliver us a commercial service. If the alternative is no NOTAMs or the rubbish AIS service, I would be prepared to pay a few quid a year, as would most members of this forum I suspect.
QDM
re Points 1 and 2, this is exactly the problem. A government monopoly leads to blind indifference to the needs of consumers and they've now made the problem worse by not publishing the A1 / A8 data anymore. If they opened up the field to competition with commercial providers, people would quite rightly go elsewhere, but as it is AIS just sits and delivers a crap, unacceptable service three months after launch. In the commercial world they would be out of business.
If they publish the data, I am sure that after all this furore someone would take the challenge and deliver us a commercial service. If the alternative is no NOTAMs or the rubbish AIS service, I would be prepared to pay a few quid a year, as would most members of this forum I suspect.
QDM
Why do it if it's not fun?
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Russel,
Re point 1 comparing commercial sites to the AIS site, you said of commercial sites:
And if the AIS site falls over? It puts our safety at risk. I'd say this is at least as important.
The cost of running a site such as Yahoo or Amazon is not related to availability. It is related to the fact that these sites hold a massivate amount of data. Lots of data requiers lots of storage space to store the data on, which is expensive. They are also global sites, requiring the data to be replicated to vast number of servers around the world. In the case of Amazon, customer orders must be taken in real-time, and backed up in real-time - again, this is expensive.
All that is required to maintain availability of the AIS website is two independant servers. This is not expensive - I don't know the details of the hardware they're running, but we may be talking 5-figure sums, certainly not 8 figures like Evo was talking about. (I'm not familiar with that project, Evo, but I'd guess the cost was due to the need for real time replication.) Real time replication is not required for this application - the NOTAMs can be manually copied from the main site to the backup site after they are periodically updated. And the procedures for handling a failure of the main site would then be to contact the ISP and ask them to re-direct the domain name to the backup site.
There is no technical reason why the AIS site can't be made reliable for a very small cost. Lots of people on this thread are comparing apples with oranges. (I probably shouldn't have mentioned Yahoo - it's a good comparison in terms of reliability, but not in terms of cost, for the reasons I've mentioned.)
Of course, making the information useful is an entirely different prospect to making it available.
FFF
----------------
Re point 1 comparing commercial sites to the AIS site, you said of commercial sites:
If they fall over you WILL go elsewhere
The cost of running a site such as Yahoo or Amazon is not related to availability. It is related to the fact that these sites hold a massivate amount of data. Lots of data requiers lots of storage space to store the data on, which is expensive. They are also global sites, requiring the data to be replicated to vast number of servers around the world. In the case of Amazon, customer orders must be taken in real-time, and backed up in real-time - again, this is expensive.
All that is required to maintain availability of the AIS website is two independant servers. This is not expensive - I don't know the details of the hardware they're running, but we may be talking 5-figure sums, certainly not 8 figures like Evo was talking about. (I'm not familiar with that project, Evo, but I'd guess the cost was due to the need for real time replication.) Real time replication is not required for this application - the NOTAMs can be manually copied from the main site to the backup site after they are periodically updated. And the procedures for handling a failure of the main site would then be to contact the ISP and ask them to re-direct the domain name to the backup site.
There is no technical reason why the AIS site can't be made reliable for a very small cost. Lots of people on this thread are comparing apples with oranges. (I probably shouldn't have mentioned Yahoo - it's a good comparison in terms of reliability, but not in terms of cost, for the reasons I've mentioned.)
Of course, making the information useful is an entirely different prospect to making it available.
FFF
----------------
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Rule of thumb is that cost scales as the square of the number of nines in the percentage uptime. If 90% uptime is OK, 99% costs 4 times as much, 99.9% costs 9 times as much etc. Reliability isn't all that cheap, but we aren't asking for the sort of five-9's reliability that Amazon look for. 99.9% is only down an hour a year after all
(edit: I seem to be making more posts about computers than flying at the moment. Bl**dy weather... )
(edit: I seem to be making more posts about computers than flying at the moment. Bl**dy weather...
)
Last edited by Evo; 5th Nov 2002 at 11:56.
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The sites mentioned (like personal online banking) by others probably don't transact billions of dollars a day. But at least the examples provided show that web sites can provide a fairly reliable service. They do go wrong sometimes, just as your fax machine might, but by and large they are online well over 99% of the time.
There are plenty of examples which do transact very large $ amounts over the Internet. They do have to pay to get this reliability, but I was responding to a comment which suggested that web applications couldn't be reliable enough for NOTAMS. And I personally know of finance sites that transact very large $ amounts who pay 5 figure sums per year.
Lastly, there are plenty of e-commerce sites around whose hosting bill is a few thousand pounds per year that enjoy > 99% uptime.
It is true that the AIS site is not commercial - you won't go elsewhere in disgust. And it is safety critical. But, as others have said, simple text based NOTAMS could be made available from a number of servers for a tiny cost per year.
The US standards mentioned earlier are well above 99% uptime, but if the AIS site was available and responsive (leaving aside for now the question of actually being able to get the data you need, just for the sake of this discussion of hosting) 99 times out of 100 and you had to use a simplified alternative for those other times, you'd probably be reasonably happy.
For those that care, AIS is now at 91% for the last 4 days. The big hit was a 7+ hour outage, which makes me think that they don't monitor it or can't resolve problems remotely.
There are plenty of examples which do transact very large $ amounts over the Internet. They do have to pay to get this reliability, but I was responding to a comment which suggested that web applications couldn't be reliable enough for NOTAMS. And I personally know of finance sites that transact very large $ amounts who pay 5 figure sums per year.
Lastly, there are plenty of e-commerce sites around whose hosting bill is a few thousand pounds per year that enjoy > 99% uptime.
It is true that the AIS site is not commercial - you won't go elsewhere in disgust. And it is safety critical. But, as others have said, simple text based NOTAMS could be made available from a number of servers for a tiny cost per year.
The US standards mentioned earlier are well above 99% uptime, but if the AIS site was available and responsive (leaving aside for now the question of actually being able to get the data you need, just for the sake of this discussion of hosting) 99 times out of 100 and you had to use a simplified alternative for those other times, you'd probably be reasonably happy.
For those that care, AIS is now at 91% for the last 4 days. The big hit was a 7+ hour outage, which makes me think that they don't monitor it or can't resolve problems remotely.
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Calm down, calm down (in my best LPL accent )
I think it's obvious where myself and Mike have been coming from throughout this period of "NOTAM uncertainty"
I actually agree with everything you guys said about reliability, I was merely pointing out the differing financial clout between a cash-strapped QUANGO and a megaprofit bank/online seller.
Since day one (August 2002) I've been banging on (and on) about rolling back to the "A" series PIBs, parallel developing the new super-site and getting some real user testing/feedback (I refer the honourable gents to my post on www.pplir.org)
My point 1 previously was to illustrate the problem - we have zero choice at present with regards NOTAM info. Sure, you can get a half briefing from the US MIL sites, even European sites running the same software, but you cannot get your local NOTAM except from AIS-UK.
AvBrief were supposed to have their unadulterated feed from AIS by September - don't know why they haven't - I'll ask.
They will be well pleased to know that they'll have a raft of new subscribers! (QDM)
Will these be the same forum members who, of a total of > 100 views only 7 bothered to vote on the "is 3 months long enough" poll?
=================================
Copy of email to AvBrief - sent October:
Paul,
I have no issues with you using any ideas we've collected to enhance AvBrief.
My mission (and I chose to accept it) is to make NATS/AIS do the right thing and provide useable base information.
Value-add and enhancements they cannot do, and nor should they - over to you guys and the Ian Fallons of the world.
)I think it's obvious where myself and Mike have been coming from throughout this period of "NOTAM uncertainty"
I actually agree with everything you guys said about reliability, I was merely pointing out the differing financial clout between a cash-strapped QUANGO and a megaprofit bank/online seller.
Since day one (August 2002) I've been banging on (and on) about rolling back to the "A" series PIBs, parallel developing the new super-site and getting some real user testing/feedback (I refer the honourable gents to my post on www.pplir.org)
My point 1 previously was to illustrate the problem - we have zero choice at present with regards NOTAM info. Sure, you can get a half briefing from the US MIL sites, even European sites running the same software, but you cannot get your local NOTAM except from AIS-UK.
AvBrief were supposed to have their unadulterated feed from AIS by September - don't know why they haven't - I'll ask.
They will be well pleased to know that they'll have a raft of new subscribers! (QDM)
Will these be the same forum members who, of a total of > 100 views only 7 bothered to vote on the "is 3 months long enough" poll?
=================================
Copy of email to AvBrief - sent October:
Paul,
I have no issues with you using any ideas we've collected to enhance AvBrief.
My mission (and I chose to accept it) is to make NATS/AIS do the right thing and provide useable base information.
Value-add and enhancements they cannot do, and nor should they - over to you guys and the Ian Fallons of the world.
UK AIS GTi
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They will be well pleased to know that they'll have a raft of new subscribers!
QDM
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I have just tried my local 'narrow route' VFR notam print from AIS. It was much faster (but it was 20:50Z, so not many flight planners accessing the site?). Also the number of 'VRF' notam error and duplications seem to have shrunk.
Looks like a big step forward. well done AIS, Russell and Mike etc.
Looks like a big step forward. well done AIS, Russell and Mike etc.
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Given the recent performance improvement, the system at least now seems to be consistently available, but...
Why if I specify Narrow Route width 30nm routing EGBK DCT EGBK am I not informed of military exercise PHOTON EAGLE which passes within 10nm of the airfield tomorrow morning, consisting of 18 helis operating below 1000ft QFE??!!
Conversely if I specify Narrow Route width 10nm routing EGBK DCT DTY DCT EGBK, which is actually a smaller radius, the exercise is listed (albeit embedded within 2 pages of junk).
The guidance in the FAQ suggests that in order to search a 50nm "local area" around a home airfield, it's necessary to specify both a search radius of 50nm and also invent a "DCT x DCT y DCT" route specifying NavAids 50nm North and 50nm South of the field.
That's some whacky programming??!!
Why if I specify Narrow Route width 30nm routing EGBK DCT EGBK am I not informed of military exercise PHOTON EAGLE which passes within 10nm of the airfield tomorrow morning, consisting of 18 helis operating below 1000ft QFE??!!
Conversely if I specify Narrow Route width 10nm routing EGBK DCT DTY DCT EGBK, which is actually a smaller radius, the exercise is listed (albeit embedded within 2 pages of junk).
The guidance in the FAQ suggests that in order to search a 50nm "local area" around a home airfield, it's necessary to specify both a search radius of 50nm and also invent a "DCT x DCT y DCT" route specifying NavAids 50nm North and 50nm South of the field.
That's some whacky programming??!!
PPruNaholic!
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rotorcraig - thats shocking..! 
Until now I'd been thinking the system was beginning to settle down and had become confident that, although its not is not user friendly and the user interface sucks, I could get what information I needed from it.
But your tale indicates that we can't trust the system not to exclude information it should give us... I am going to maintain habit of keeping print-outs in case needed to defend myself!
Until now I'd been thinking the system was beginning to settle down and had become confident that, although its not is not user friendly and the user interface sucks, I could get what information I needed from it.
But your tale indicates that we can't trust the system not to exclude information it should give us... I am going to maintain habit of keeping print-outs in case needed to defend myself!