Apple’s Servers Start Stabilizing, Should Be Safe to Update to iOS 5

If you were one of the many people that tried to update to iOS 5 yesterday, you probably ran into a few problems. Apple updated and released an incredible amount of software yesterday, and the company’s servers couldn’t handle the heavy traffic.

When iOS 5 dropped mid-day, Apple’s backend got crushed with download and verification requests from users wanting to install iOS 5. Now, it seems that things are mostly back to normal, and you should be able to update to iOS 5 without a problem.

There have also been reports of iCloud not working, specifically relating to email. Apple has a status page for troubleshooting connectivity and syncing problems with iCloud.

Engineers at UK ISP AAISP told Cult of Mac that the level of internet traffic was “worse than world cup traffic” yesterday. The ISP engineers believe that iOS 5 and iCloud were to blame for “unprecedented levels” of broadband traffic in the UK. The company also noted that “such volumes [traffic] have never been seen before for a software upgrade.”

If that was what traffic was like in the UK, image what it was like in the US.

Almost instantaneously, thousands (potentially millions) of iDevice users started trying to download 600MB+ iOS 5 files. Many couldn’t even get the software downloaded at all throughout the day, so direct links were used to download iOS 5 at a faster speed.

Even if a user could get iOS 5 downloaded without any problems, Apple still has to sign the install with its servers in iTunes before it can be run. That caused more errors yesterday for users, with the iTunes “Error 3200” message becoming a trending topic on Twitter. People could finally download iOS 5, but they couldn’t get it verified.

Today, Apple’s servers seem to be back to normal. Everything isn’t perfect, but more people are able to download and verify iOS 5. If you’ve been trying to get iOS 5 running on your device, try installing it now.

Let us know if you’re able to install iOS 5 today. We want to know if you ran into any errors or issues.