Once I determined that some of the login capability had resumed, I began exploring the Starbucks site…
Situational Awareness
After doing some site testing over at the Starbucks site, here are more details on the site access issue, and the Starbucks Card site login disturbance:
- The main site itself is operational;
- The Starbucks Card feature on the site is also operational;
- If you are a “new user” (meaning you haven’t registered your Starbucks Card yet, or you don’t even have a Starbucks Card or an online Starbucks account yet), and you went to the Starbucks Card Rewards page to learn more about the program… and then you attempted to click through to sign up: you’ll get an error message saying that excessive traffic has made the signup unavailable. (Although I provide that link to the error message, I’m not sure if that was a quick hack or a permanent link… so it’s possible it may start working once the problem has been resolved);
- If you are an existing Starbucks Card holder (like me), you can use the link provided on the Starbucks Card Rewards page to begin your activation of the AT&T-based free Wi-Fi tied to your Starbucks Card account;
- If you already have a Starbucks Card that you’re itching to activate at the same time as you sign up for the free Wi-Fi, you can try to directly access the “Starbucks Card Rewards with Wi-Fi” page to initiate the signup. Note that this page is essentially the same as the link provided for existing Starbucks Card holders.
More Information for the Interested Folk
- Want to read the EULA from AT&T for the free Wi-Fi?
- How about a tech support page from AT&T about the Wi-Fi? This covers AT&T-based Wi-Fi service, not just at Starbucks.
- How about a customer service page from Starbucks? This isn’t merely about the Starbucks Card, but quite a few different things Starbucksian.
N.B.
A lot of companies use border servers (accelerators like Akamai [AKAM] and others of its ilk) to manage static content closer to external users (and sometimes even internal users), so it makes sense that many of the bits ‘n pieces stored on those are accessible. But, design-wise, a lot of authentication functions are centralized on back-end servers or distributed into the middleware cloud (or, more primitively, a static middleware layer). Isolation-wise, it should be possible from a good design to segment out features that require appropriate authentication from other features that are not reliant on a user’s identity.
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