NetCache problem at Apple

Apple’s apparent recent deployment of NetCaches for the .Mac service is causing grief for people using the service to host things like their podcast MP3s:

adamcurr@Adam-Currys-PB17[~]: curl -I http://homepage.mac.com/dailysourcecode/DSC/DSC-2005-02-10.mp3
HTTP/1.1 403 Invalid Method
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2005 10:15:28 GMT
Content-Type: text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Language: en-US
Via: 1.1 netcache05 (NetCache NetApp/5.5R4)

Sometimes, you can’t get a HEAD back at all:

Marcie:~ mark$ curl -I http://homepage.mac.com/dailysourcecode/DSC/DSC-2005-02-11.mp3
curl: (52) Empty reply from server
Marcie:~ mark$ curl -I http://homepage.mac.com/dailysourcecode/DSC/DSC-2005-02-11.mp3
curl: (7) Connect failed

What’s astonishing isn’t that there’s a problem, but how quickly the news of the problem spreads through the social network. Especially when it’s published by a superstar blogger like Adam Curry. I don’t download podcasts automatically every day so I didn’t experience the problem (some clients issue a HEAD to determine the file size of the RSS enclosure beinng linked to) myself, but at work one of the guys quipped in the lunch room “I thought NetApp was all good? Looks like they broke .Mac. My Daily Source codes aren’t downloading anymore. This ain’t gonna look good for Apple or NetApp.”. Astonishing. From problem discovery to lunch room chat in a day. PR isn’t dead, it’s just a whole new game… It will be interesting to see if Apple and NetApp are able to maneouver fast enough to save face.

Update: Well, that certainly didn’t take long! NetApp employees already got in touch with Adam Curry, and even provided solutions for Apple via Curry’s blog! It’s worth noting that it was some passionate NetApp engineers who turned this potential PR disaster into a victory. Not the PR department. I suspect it will be Monday before the Apple account SE will be tracked down within NetApp. The ball is now back in Apple’s court. Let’s see if Apple can respond before they get NetApp’s email/voicemails Monday morning.