UPS Real Time Server problems?

[ILoveHostasaurus]

Re: UPS Real Time Server problems?

I had a discussion with UPS' web services team today, that's where the new URL came from. www.ups.com utilizes a third party CDN (Akamai) that just passes requests for the /ups.app/xml/Rate back to them anyway, so basically they're an unnecessary proxy in the case of UPS Tools requests so UPS suggested going direct to them would be better.

I have a few different clients' sites I'm going to monitor the logs on and reconvene with UPS tomorrow to report the findings. If the new URL works better, we'll try to get that information out to other users of the Viking module. On our own module, it's going to require a streaming update to change it since the URL is not configurable due to UPS' integration requirements we had to abide by.

[mikey]

Re: UPS Real Time Server problems?

Just to clarify...

This URL is direct
https://onlinetools.ups.com/ups.app/xml/Rate

This is through the Akamai
https://www.ups.com/ups.app/xml/Rate

-Mike

I had a discussion with UPS' web services team today, that's where the new URL came from. www.ups.com utilizes a third party CDN (Akamai) that just passes requests for the /ups.app/xml/Rate back to them anyway, so basically they're an unnecessary proxy in the case of UPS Tools requests so UPS suggested going direct to them would be better.

I have a few different clients' sites I'm going to monitor the logs on and reconvene with UPS tomorrow to report the findings. If the new URL works better, we'll try to get that information out to other users of the Viking module. On our own module, it's going to require a streaming update to change it since the URL is not configurable due to UPS' integration requirements we had to abide by.

[ILoveHostasaurus]

Re: UPS Real Time Server problems?

We think some issue was occurring on Akamai's side because it seems to have cleared up on stores using the normal URL. UPS recommended that we ask our clients to switch to the onlinetools URL though because those requests will always be passed back to UPS anyway by Akamai, so using www.ups.com just adds an extra hop that will slow the requests.

Our CTO is looking into the possibility of switching our module to using onlinetools and we'd push it out as a streaming update if the change is made.

[mikey]

Re: UPS Real Time Server problems?

I just switched to the direct URL. Works fine. Better than fine actually there is very little lag when using WCW shipping estimator now.

-Mike

[gsam]

Re: UPS Real Time Server problems?

Has anything changed as far as the UPS Online Tools module goes? Yesterday, the 13th, we were able to generate labels without a single error. Just wondering if we were lucky or this issue has been fixed?

[ILoveHostasaurus]

Re: UPS Real Time Server problems?

Has anything changed as far as the UPS Online Tools module goes? Yesterday, the 13th, we were able to generate labels without a single error. Just wondering if we were lucky or this issue has been fixed?

If we release an update it will likely be a few weeks. Users of the Viking Coders module are able to update the URL themselves because it has a configurable field for it, our module doesn't have that as UPS did not allow it as part of the integration agreement. The issues appeared to die down after about a week so Akamai may have found and fixed whatever had been going on, but since they're just a middle man for every request that involves UPS Online Tools, it's still better to go direct using the alternate URL.

[mikel]

Re: UPS Real Time Server problems?

Just an update that we have not had any issues since the fix posted by Rafael above on the 12th. Thank you David and Rafael for nailing this down.

Mike

[wajake41]

Re: UPS Real Time Server problems?

We ran into "Estimated Shipping" problem yesterday . Appears that UPS was down or the API request via Viking module was timing out. It's OK today (for now). Has it been firmly established that Viking users should be using the onlinetools URL? We still have not switched, should we? BTW I'm working on the UPS Truck Freight Rate estimator API right now and finding the documentation very confusing and full of typos. Has anyone else been able to master this? Would really appreciate advice/help from anyone who has. Regards, Larry