[Eril-l] IEEE Xplore "All Seats in Use"

[Erika Boardman]

Hi everyone,

I wanted to see if anyone else has experienced the same thing or something
similar.
Recently, one of our Subject Librarians was conducting an instruction
session on how to use IEEE Xplore. It's a class of roughly 160 students.
During the session, at least 3 students reported that they couldn't access
the database and saw an "*All Online Seats Are in Use*" message:

[image: image (3).png]
Our subscription is unlimited simultaneous users. We reached out to IEEE
and they were very prompt to get back to us with an explanation from their
support team. They said that when a customer hits the concurrency limit
(resulting in the All Seats in Use message), it is usually due to robotic
activity. If the robotic activity persists and exceeds the limit for
concurrent sessions, IEEE must suspend the access for that IP address and
inform the university. However, on the backend for them, they didn't see
any robotic activity that would trigger this to happen, but could (in some
smaller fashion) be the cause for this to happen.

This is the first and only time (that we know of) where this has happened.
We're just curious if this has happened to another institution, and if
there was ever anything figured out about what may have triggered the
message and blocked access. I'd be curious if it could have to do with
multiple users searching the database at the same time, from the same IP
address (like an instruction session) or if there's another cause others
have found.

Thanks!
Erika

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Erika Boardman, MLIS *| Electronic Resources Management Librarian
UNC Charlotte | J. Murrey Atkins Library
9201 University City Blvd. | Charlotte, NC 28223
eboardman at uncc.edu | 704-687-1124 | library.charlotte.edu
*Pronouns: she, her, hers*
*-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------*


*If you are not the intended recipient of this transmission or a person
responsible for delivering it to the intended recipient, any disclosure,
copying, distribution, or other use of any of the information in this
transmission is strictly prohibited. If you have received this transmission
in error, please notify me immediately by email or by telephone at
704-687-1124. Thank you.*
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.eril-l.org/pipermail/eril-l-eril-l.org/attachments/20221028/e2b5c13e/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image (3).png
Type: image/png
Size: 88894 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.eril-l.org/pipermail/eril-l-eril-l.org/attachments/20221028/e2b5c13e/attachment.png>