WormNET statistics

(Up to WormNET (Worms Armageddon))

The WormNET statistics page is a collection of statistical information about WormNET activity. Data is provided by several sources:

• WormNET activity before February 24, 2009 comes from old HostingBuddy logs. Since HostingBuddy wasn't very stable and was occasionally put offline for long periods of time, there are gaps in the data.
• WormNET data since February 24, 2009 is provided by Web Snooper WormNET logs.
• WormNET hosted games history (see below) is provided from the above sources, plus older personal logs.
• Data for the WormNAT2 traffic graph at the bottom is provided by HostingProxy (the server component of WormNAT2).

WormNET activity is measured by channel joins (thus, a player joining a channel represents one activity measurement unit). This is why W:A users represent the majority in the version distribution chart, even though #AnythingGoes is mostly occupied by snooper users. For the same reasons, spikes of snooper activity can be observed on days when the bot collecting the logs was restarted several times (since it counts users already present on WormNET every time it connects).

Up until September 14th 2009, WebSnooper was only present in #AnythingGoes, and thus didn't monitor activity in other channels. Logging all WormNET channels caused an increase in measured activity, and thus the long-term statistics have been reset to data collected since this date.

The hosted games history is generated by interpolating pairs of WormNET game IDs and timestamps. A game ID is basically an index which is incremented every time a game is hosted. Thus, having two pairs of game ID/timestamps, we know the exact number of games hosted (and can estimate WormNET activity) in that time period. Some events (indicated by a red line), such as game ID counter resets or gamelist flood, are handled specially to not disturb the statistics.

Timeline

Here is a list of major events that had an effect on the displayed statistics (whether directly or indirectly).

June 29, 2007

HostingBuddy began its sporadic logging of #AnythingGoes activity.

W:A 3.6.28.0 Beta was released.

July 1, 2007

ProSnooper was released.

August 13, 2007

ProSnooper2 was released.

March 23–24, 2008

Game list was frozen for some time due to a WormNET problem.

July 20, 2008

WormNET database rollback.

July 28, 2008

W:A 3.6.29.0 Beta was released.

August 28, 2008

First recorded instance of game list flood.

October 13, 2008

WormNAT2 server was launched.

October 25, 2008

Game list flood.

November 3, 2008

More game list flood. Last recorded instance before a fix was implemented the next day.

December 4, 2008

The Wheat Snooper was released.

February 24, 2009 (marked by a red line)

Web Snooper was launched and began logging #AnythingGoes activity.

May 6, 2009

Old W:A versions started getting an error message when connecting to WormNET, due to connecting to WormNET by its IP address which was about to change.

May 11, 2009

The WormNET statistics page was announced.

June 1, 2009

A memory corruption bug that was causing instability in WormNAT2 was fixed, after a day of intensive on-site debugging.

June 19, 2009

WormNET server was inaccessible for a few hours due to migration to another ISP.

July 17, 2009

The Team17 network was down while Team17 copied a file.

August 5, 2009

Team17 DNS servers were down for more than a few hours.

August 10–11, 2009

Planned outage due to network maintenance.

August 23–24, 2009

Another DNS outage that lasted a good part of the weekend. The problem causing random DNS outages is believed to have been fixed on the 25th.

September 14, 2009 (marked by a red line)

WebSnooper began logging activity in all WormNET channels.

September 15, 2009

A large number of schemes have been added to HostingBuddy.

September 22–23, 2009

WormNAT2 server went down for 16 hours due to broken link dependencies.

December 17–18, 2009

Several WormNET outages which left the bots outside the channels for a while.

February 9–10, 2010

A WormNET restart left the bots outside the channels for a while.

March 4, 2010

The logging bot failed to rejoin the channels due to an unknown reason.

March 17–18, 2010

Bug in bot timeout code caused the logging bot to remain disconnected from WormNET for over a day.

March 18, 2010 (later)

Temporary Team17 network outage.

April 24–25, 2010

WormNET server was down for the weekend.

May 5, 2010

The server hosting the WormNET bots was down for most of the day. Additionally, a problem in the replacement HostingBuddy instance caused a large number of bogus (unjoinable) games to be hosted.

July 22, 2010

A problem in HostingBuddy caused a large number of bogus (unjoinable) games to be hosted.

October 10–12, 2010

WormNET server nearly unusable due to considerable network lag (caused by problems at Team17's ISP).

October 26, 2010

W:A 3.6.30.0 Beta was released.

November 16, 2010

W:A 3.6.31.0 Beta was released.

November 28 – December 5

HostingBuddy maintenance.

December 13, 2010

HostingBuddy began warning 3.6.28.0 users of upcoming end of 3.6.28.0 support.

January 1, 2011

HostingBuddy dropped support for 3.6.28.0 users.

External links

• Discussion thread on the Team17 forums.