Reply to: Renewing your vehicle tax online

[DaveB]

The old service worked perfectly well, never had a problem with it regardless of how late it was left on either car. Never heard any complaints about it either.

Then the numptys in GDS decide it needs to be redesigned to match the rest of gov.uk and it dies on it's arse.

[d000hg]

It is not a new service.

Then maybe the old one wasn't designed to cope with that level of demand either, but it was never given the chance to prove it?

[tractor]

...

Given that the taxpayer pays for this, how can it possibly make sense for them to provision hardware at a level that can meet a load expected to occur precisely once, when the new service first launches? It's not as if they're running it on EC2 and can spin up a few dozen additional server instances as needed.

It is not a new service.

[NickFitz]

Given that the public is their target I would have thought that yes, they should have assumed the worst.

There's also the "new toy on the desk" effect. Give a bunch of users a new app (or set of apps) and of course they are going to explore all the options on day 1. Where complex searches and the like are involved they'll be hammering the system to a far greater level than once it settles down. Don't underestimate the effect of "Hey Bob, look at this neat new search feature", as the same guy does it for the umpteenth time that day.

Hands up the CUKers who had a peek at the website once reports that it was struggling came in

Given that the taxpayer pays for this, how can it possibly make sense for them to provision hardware at a level that can meet a load expected to occur precisely once, when the new service first launches? It's not as if they're running it on EC2 and can spin up a few dozen additional server instances as needed.

[Sysman]

The tax disc should have been replaced by "vignette" bought a petrol stations. It should be for all vehicles including foreigners, like wot the Swiss Austrians Czechs etc etc etc have

Dunno about the Austrians or Czechs but in Switzerland the vignette is just for motorway use. The Swiss vehicle tax is completely separate and tied to your number plates.

• if you want to take your car off the road for winter you can send your plates back and get a tax refund. Ditto for just a month at any time of year
• you can run more than one vehicle with the same set of plates - put them on your weekend car until Monday morning etc

[Paddy]

The tax disc should have been replaced by "vignette" bought a petrol stations. It should be for all vehicles including foreigners, like wot the Swiss Austrians Czechs etc etc etc have

[tractor]

...

And just how much do you think those systems cost, and how long do they take to get right? eBay was down only recently and every major MMO I can remember has had teething problems.

All of us have been able to renew online for 5 years at least. Never has there been a problem. Until now. Nothing in the transactional model appears to have changed and functionally, it works the same as it always did.

Teething problems?

They borked it. No excuses.

[d000hg]

The dashboard for vehicle tax renewals reports the service cost 45.6m to run for the last year.

It died yesterday at 10,000 users and has not been back online since.

Amazon and Ebay eat it for performance.

Even online games support more concurrent users with less problems.

And just how much do you think those systems cost, and how long do they take to get right? eBay was down only recently and every major MMO I can remember has had teething problems.

[xoggoth]

Tax discs are quite pretty. When I get my time machine working I may flog them to the moderately well off in the 12th century. Richer types will get old CDs, 1 gold piece each.

[Sysman]

Want a new hobby? Tax disc collection might be up for grabs

This chap collects old tax discs

Jones has been gathering discs since retrieving one from his parents’ Austin 1100, and has amassed a collection of more than 207,000.

But after collecting at least one disc from every year tax discs have existed, and for almost every model of car driven in the UK, he confesses that his enthusiasm is waning slightly.

“I had realised it didn’t quite excite me as much as it did when I was younger and I haven’t as much time these days, so this seems like the time to draw a line in the sand,” he says. “I don’t think I can continue with something that is no longer moving forward.”

Which of you lot have a Maybach?

There are still some elusive discs he would like to own – any reader with one for a Maybach or Pagani should get in touch. But as Jones adds: “The discs were always going to stop before I did – I’ve often thought I should wind it up, but then found a good one and regained my enthusiasm.

[Sysman]

There are around 30 days in a month, making 100,000 a day, which is less than 250,000 by a good margin.

It would be interesting to see the raw data on that to try and predict likely peak loads.

40 million / 365 / 24 / 3600 gives ~1.27 per second. That assumes an even distribution, which it won't be, but it's hardly a cutting edge rate for transactions per second.

Anyway, do you think they didn't look at the traffic figures for the existing site when planning the likely capacity they'd need? It's just that a load of people who'd normally be spread out over the month are panicking and doing it now because they're too stupid to understand a simple news story they didn't properly listen to anyway about a trivial change in bureaucracy, and thinking they need to do something today or they'll be put in prison and their babies sold to Lithuanian immigrants.

Given that the public is their target I would have thought that yes, they should have assumed the worst.

There's also the "new toy on the desk" effect. Give a bunch of users a new app (or set of apps) and of course they are going to explore all the options on day 1. Where complex searches and the like are involved they'll be hammering the system to a far greater level than once it settles down. Don't underestimate the effect of "Hey Bob, look at this neat new search feature", as the same guy does it for the umpteenth time that day.

Hands up the CUKers who had a peek at the website once reports that it was struggling came in

[tractor]

"But hold on, I hear you say – the measurements (years, miles, dollars, etc.) are in the plural, so why isn’t fewer the correct choice? Not so! We use less in such cases because we’re actually still referring to total amounts (of time, money, distance, etc.) rather than individual units."

[TheCyclingProgrammer]

Even online games support more concurrent users with fewer problems.

[tractor]

...

The dashboard for vehicle tax renewals reports the service cost 45.6m to run for the last year.

It died yesterday at 10,000 users and has not been back online since.

Amazon and Ebay eat it for performance.

Even online games support more concurrent users with less problems.

[TheCyclingProgrammer]

Optimist!

Well you can always double-check...(when it comes back online):

https://www.vehicleenquiry.service.gov.uk