Thanks to all who've posted their nice comments, publicly and privately, about this auction. We worked extremely hard on compiling it and feel it is one of the best REA auctions ever.
As far as the site speed is concerned, this appears to have been a problem that affected some customers for a short period of time. No one is on our site more than we are, and we were navigating it fine, all while trying to diagnose issues for our customers. The recent bids page (
http://bid.robertedwardauctions.com/lots/bids) shows that bids were coming in rapidly (every few seconds) since the auction opened at 5 PM so many users were bidding without issue. We were aware of the issues and worked with our software administrator and server companies to determine the problem. It was discovered that a malicious IP address from a foreign country was attempting to access the server and was overwhelming it with multiple attempts every second. The attempts were never successful and nothing was ever compromised (or even in jeopardy of being compromised), but it was manifesting itself as loads and loads of traffic. This is the first time this has ever happened to our server, and the server company has blocked this country (we are confident this will affect no bidders) and added an additional level of firewalling beyond what's already in place.
The site is working very quickly right now after these changes have been made. With 26 days left to place initial bids, and almost certainly nothing going to sell for the price that it's at today, I'm sure there will be plenty of opportunities to get back in there and do some bidding. Our servers are prepared for multiples of the already-heavy traffic we receive. We've taken in more bids in the first five hours than some auctions take in during their entire duration, so I know we will be well equipped to handle whatever traffic comes our way.
We appreciate everyone's patience and look forward to an incredible auction!
Brian Dwyer
REA