Amtrak Status Maps / Amsnag - Down

[Ryan]

Amsnag is a threat to their business model. So they moved to shut it down.

That's a bit extreme, I think. First, there's no proof that this was done intentionally. Second, a relatively unknown site that's used by a handful people comprising a tiny fraction of their customer base is hardly a "threat to their business model".

Heck, over 90% of my use of the tool was for information gathering with no immediate plans on buying a ticket, so there isn't any real lost revenue there at all. In fact, on some occasions, being able to tell people "Here's how little it can cost to take the train" has likely convinced people to select the train over other modes, so you'd have a tough time arguing that a loss of revenue drove a hypothetical decision to shut it down (IF in fact that's what happened).

 

[the_traveler]

Amtrak, however, has a monopoly on passenger train service, as well as a pretty loyal base of railfan customers who want to ride trains rather than use other transportation options and will pay for the privilege. This is basically the perfect storm for price discrimination.

Yes, Amtrak does have a monopoly on passenger rail in the US. But I bet you can not find any other way to go directly from Anniston, AL to Wolf Point, MT except by Amtrak! (Maybe by Greyhound, I don't know, but I for one would not want to sit on a bus for 4-7 days!)

 

[Lawdude]

That's a bit extreme, I think. First, there's no proof that this was done intentionally. Second, a relatively unknown site that's used by a handful people comprising a tiny fraction of their customer base is hardly a "threat to their business model".

Heck, over 90% of my use of the tool was for information gathering with no immediate plans on buying a ticket, so there isn't any real lost revenue there at all. In fact, on some occasions, being able to tell people "Here's how little it can cost to take the train" has likely convinced people to select the train over other modes, so you'd have a tough time arguing that a loss of revenue drove a hypothetical decision to shut it down (IF in fact that's what happened).

I don't want to speak for Paul, but his posts certainly imply that Amtrak is doing something deliberately (i.e., you can try to do something like Amsnag yourself "until Amtrak catches up to you").

But more broadly, I don't think you should assume that the people who do yield management and who studied price discrimination in business school agree with you that something like Amsnag is no threat. The issue is that the pricing model is premised on Amtrak being able to control the amount of price transparency, and their website is very carefully designed to do that (which is why even though other travel websites offer 3 day and full month searches, Amtrak's does not). Further, Amsnag is being promoted within the railfan community, which pays those big long distance sleeper fares and is probably somewhat less sensitive to higher fares than the people who purchase coach tickets over shorter distances. In other words, Amsnag is a threat to a pretty significant revenue stream, even if it isn't that many people who are using it.

 

[Lawdude]

Yes, Amtrak does have a monopoly on passenger rail in the US. But I bet you can not find any other way to go directly from Anniston, AL to Wolf Point, MT except by Amtrak! (Maybe by Greyhound, I don't know, but I for one would not want to sit on a bus for 4-7 days!)

You should understand that I am not criticizing Amtrak (or the developer of Amsnag). Amtrak has a lot of competitive disadvantages that have been exhaustively discussed. But one thing they do have is a dedicated community of people who like to take trains, strongly prefer them to other transportation options, and are willing to spend significant amounts of money to book sleeping accommodations on long distance trains. And because Amtrak is the only significant provider of that service (obviously, there are some private services here and there, but nothing comparable to Amtrak), Amtrak has some monopoly power which it can use to generate needed revenue from those customers. Amsnag at least potentially threatens their ability to do that.

 

[Ispolkom]

But I bet you can not find any other way to go directly from Anniston, AL to Wolf Point, MT except by Amtrak!

"Direct" is not the adjective I'd use for the Amtrak route between those two cities.

I'm waiting to see if Amtrak has actually shut out Amsnag. I never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by carelessness, and I would be a bit surprised to find Amtrak that much on the ball with regard to revenue.

 

[CHamilton]

The travel reservation site Hipmunk does have Amtrak data, and does allow +/- 3 day searching, but its results are not as detailed as what you got with Amsnag, and the results seem to be limited to the NEC. Maybe Hipmunk can be persuaded to expand their services.

 

[acelafan]

Amsnag is a threat to their business model. So they moved to shut it down.

That's a bit extreme, I think. First, there's no proof that this was done intentionally. Second, a relatively unknown site that's used by a handful people comprising a tiny fraction of their customer base is hardly a "threat to their business model".

Heck, over 90% of my use of the tool was for information gathering with no immediate plans on buying a ticket, so there isn't any real lost revenue there at all. In fact, on some occasions, being able to tell people "Here's how little it can cost to take the train" has likely convinced people to select the train over other modes, so you'd have a tough time arguing that a loss of revenue drove a hypothetical decision to shut it down (IF in fact that's what happened).

That's a good point - I used amsnag on several occasions to check ticket prices to illustrate to family members how much a ticket would be...often cheaper than what they expected. I think the traffic that amsnag generated was a tiny percentage of the overall traffic to amtrak.com.

 

[PRR 60]

But I bet you can not find any other way to go directly from Anniston, AL to Wolf Point, MT except by Amtrak!

"Direct" is not the adjective I'd use for the Amtrak route between those two cities.

I'm waiting to see if Amtrak has actually shut out Amsnag. I never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by carelessness, and I would be a bit surprised to find Amtrak that much on the ball with regard to revenue.

LOL! Amtrak is not really the sharpest knife in the IT drawer either.

Maybe we (and I) were giving them too much credit in the savvy department when the initial reaction was that they blocked the sites intentionally.

 

[printman2000]

I wonder if Amtrak took notice of IP addresses that were doing more than a "normal" amount of requests and pulled the plug on all of them.

At first I thought this could be the case because I got results when a ran amsnag from my own machine instead of the normal web hosting server. But then I noticed that they were nonsense. So I suspect Amtrak made some change that is causing the problem. Theoretically, changing one character in the reservation query response could send amsnag to the bit bucket.

So, Paul, the fix for the status maps will not fix Amsnag?

 

[Lawdude]

That's a good point - I used amsnag on several occasions to check ticket prices to illustrate to family members how much a ticket would be...often cheaper than what they expected. I think the traffic that amsnag generated was a tiny percentage of the overall traffic to amtrak.com.

Pricing strategy goes beyond one purchase. Indeed, sometimes the last thing that the seller wants is for a person to decide to purchase the service at a lower price, because such purchases can create the expectation that the same price will be available again and will result in a reduction of future sales.

In Amtrak's ideal world, railfans wouldn't even know what the price buckets ARE. That's how yield management worked in the airline industry 30 years ago-- the travel agents were aware of the buckets, but passengers were not-- they had no idea if the $445 they paid to fly roundtrip from Los Angeles to Newark was the lowest fare available, a mid-range fare, or one of the highest excursion fares. Obviously, that's not possible in the age of the Internet, a fact that has helped reduce airline revenues and has led to different airline pricing strategies including a la carte pricing. Since Amtrak hasn't moved in that direction (thankfully), having less information available about the availability of different fares is still a significant aspect of Amtrak's yield management strategy.

 

[zephyr17]

My own theory is that it wasn't so much Amtrak not wanting to display price information, but the pattern of "hits" from Amsnag matched what could be a security threat. Each day in the query range was a hit, so Amsnag was generating a lot of hits in a very short period of time, so that the pattern clearly wasn't from a human user. The pattern could look like an attempt at a "Denial of Service" attack and it is something that could flag it to Amtrak's IT security. I think maybe Amtrak implemented some new security features that detected the pattern, and blocked the ISP that was "attacking" it.

 

[Anderson]

Considering that it hit Amsnag and the Status Maps on two sites alike, I think you're right.

 

[Lawdude]

Considering that it hit Amsnag and the Status Maps on two sites alike, I think you're right.

I'm skeptical, because it looks like it is pretty straightforward to get Status Maps back up and running and not so straightforward to get Amsnag going again. (And as I said, everything I know about yield management would suggest that Amtrak management would hate Amsnag, because it circumvents what was almost certainly a deliberate strategy as to how much search flexibility they have decided to allow.)

 

[Devil's Advocate]

The pattern could look like an attempt at a "Denial of Service" attack and it is something that could flag it to Amtrak's IT security. I think maybe Amtrak implemented some new security features that detected the pattern, and blocked the ISP that was "attacking" it.

Normally a DOS attack involves hundreds or even thousands of clients with specially constructed commands and sequences intended to cause as much resource depletion as possible. AmSnag would probably look like an extremely heavy user that wasn't following the normal retrieval patterns and was ignoring images and other visual elements, but that's not the same thing as a DOS attack. Even AmSnag dropped most of the usual page elements it could still have become Amtrak's heaviest user. AmSnag would most likely not generate anywhere near enough traffic to impact a commercial scale front end, but certainly enough to be logged for further investigation. We all know that Amtrak is aware of this site and anything we put here. It's not that difficult for me to believe they decided to pull the plug on AmSnag. Maybe for security. Maybe for resource conservation. Maybe for revenue management. Or it could simply be a new firewall system or resource management system they've added or adjusted for unrelated reasons. Lots of possible answers but very little first hand information. Hopefully Paul will expand on what he has seen so far when he gets the chance.

 

[John Bobinyec]

Considering that it hit Amsnag and the Status Maps on two sites alike, I think you're right.

I'm skeptical, because it looks like it is pretty straightforward to get Status Maps back up and running and not so straightforward to get Amsnag going again. (And as I said, everything I know about yield management would suggest that Amtrak management would hate Amsnag, because it circumvents what was almost certainly a deliberate strategy as to how much search flexibility they have decided to allow.)

The trouble is that it's not possible for Amsnag to use the workaround that I came up with, per se. We need to come up with a variation.

jb

 

[Tumbleweed]

I doubt very much that Amtrak deliberately derailed (how's that for a pun?) Amsnag and/or Status Maps...they have been around for quite awhile and it seems there are quite a few Amtrak folks that are on this site and certainly are familiar with Amsnag and the Status Maps....

 

[PaulM]

Make it shareware.

You asked for it

I'm just a retired operations analyst who took up computer programming as a hobby, so most of this is above my pay grade. But I can say that when Amtrak.com gets a query from the IP (internet protocol) address from Amsnag's hosting service, it returns the page you now see, not the page with reservation options. Whether it was accidental or not, the IP is now on sort of a no-fly list.

 

[John Bobinyec]

Make it shareware.

You asked for it

I'm just a retired operations analyst who took up computer programming as a hobby, so most of this is above my pay grade. But I can say that when Amtrak.com gets a query from the IP (internet protocol) address from Amsnag's hosting service, it returns the page you now see, not the page with reservation options. Whether it was accidental or not, the IP is now on sort of a no-fly list.

Paul,

I think I have a solution for you to keep Amsnag going. Please contact me offline at:

jgb at dbd01 dot com.

John Bobinyec

Moderator edit: modified e-mail.

 

[ParrotRob]

1334171592[/url]' post='360154']Normally a DOS attack involves hundreds or even thousands of clients with specially constructed commands and sequences intended to cause as much resource depletion as possible. AmSnag would probably look like an extremely heavy user that wasn't following the normal retrieval patterns and was ignoring images and other visual elements, but that's not the same thing as a DOS attack. Even AmSnag dropped most of the usual page elements it could still have become Amtrak's heaviest user. AmSnag would most likely not generate anywhere near enough traffic to impact a commercial scale front end, but certainly enough to be logged for further investigation. We all know that Amtrak is aware of this site and anything we put here. It's not that difficult for me to believe they decided to pull the plug on AmSnag. Maybe for security. Maybe for resource conservation. Maybe for revenue management. Or it could simply be a new firewall system or resource management system they've added or adjusted for unrelated reasons. Lots of possible answers but very little first hand information. Hopefully Paul will expand on what he has seen so far when he gets the chance.

Not true. What you describe is a DDoS or DISTRIBUTED denial of service attack. A run of the mill DOS attack could easily be launched from a single client.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

Not true. What you describe is a DDoS or DISTRIBUTED denial of service attack. A run of the mill DOS attack could easily be launched from a single client.

Sorry for not delving into more detail for you. AmSnag's access will still not have the signature of a NON-DISTRIBUTED DOS attack either. Yes, you can launch a NON-DISTRIBUTED DOS attack from a single client. However, unless you have access to the back end you're probably not going to be doing much damage or preventing much access to a commercial scale website and your own address will most likely be automatically blacklisted by the firewall. If you only have a single client to work with then you'd be a lot better off looking for another vector entirely. Going the NON-DISTRIBUTED DOS route with a single client isn't likely to be even minimally successful against commercial services.

 

[crazyrunner]

You asked for it

I'm just a retired operations analyst who took up computer programming as a hobby, so most of this is above my pay grade. But I can say that when Amtrak.com gets a query from the IP (internet protocol) address from Amsnag's hosting service, it returns the page you now see, not the page with reservation options. Whether it was accidental or not, the IP is now on sort of a no-fly list.

Well sir, you did a fine job with this! Thank you for the code, I will put up on my server to see if it will work as is and report back here...

 

[John Bobinyec]

You asked for it

I'm just a retired operations analyst who took up computer programming as a hobby, so most of this is above my pay grade. But I can say that when Amtrak.com gets a query from the IP (internet protocol) address from Amsnag's hosting service, it returns the page you now see, not the page with reservation options. Whether it was accidental or not, the IP is now on sort of a no-fly list.

Well sir, you did a fine job with this! Thank you for the code, I will put up on my server to see if it will work as is and report back here...

Not to discourage you, but Paul and I are working on a solution for this, which may save you a bit of trouble. We'll know in a couple of days.

jb

 

[TimePeace]

I hit amsnag sometime today, don't remember exactly what time, and it came up and worked fine, on a short (3 day) request. But now it is down again.

Keep up the good work guys, and know that we all appreciate your efforts very much.

 

[tricia]

May I add my voice to the chorus of "gosh we sure do appreciate past and present efforts to keep Amsnag up and running?"

If/when this is resolved and the site up and running again, I hope some final explanation (beyond just speculation) of why it went down will be posted on this forum.

 

[crazyrunner]

Not to discourage you, but Paul and I are working on a solution for this, which may save you a bit of trouble. We'll know in a couple of days.

jb

OK, I'm just tinkering. Looking forward to seeing the "official" solution. Thanks!