Yes, it was for me too, although now it's fine again. I think this is the negative part of the usually positive fact that we are directly connected to MAE WEST (Metropolitan Area Exchange West) one of the two biggest nodes in the world. It's good because MAE WEST never goes down (or it would be a disaster if it did - probably the whole net would crash) but the bad part is that the system is overcrowded (because almost all traffic goes through this node.) This is especially true for the high traffic times of day/week. My understanding is that the highest traffic periods are weekdays (workdays) between 7:00 and 9:00 am. I guess people surf when they first come into work? Anyway, 7:00 to 9:00 am PST (where the server is) would be 10:00 to 12:00 EST. So maybe it is that sort of thing.
Or maybe not. It is so hard to tell with our present set up, because there are hundreds (maybe over a thousand) different sites all being served off the same computer. So maybe it is something with the server itself, and not with the general net. I don't know. When I finally get our new server up we'll at least know the answer to some of these questions. Anyway, sorry about the slow going. Hopefully things will get better soon.
One more thing. Often times if you request a page (or try to post something) and it stalls for a really long time, the problem is that your packets got dropped somewhere. If you hit stop and try again, it will often go right through. If you have submitted a post and it is stalled while still on the posting screen, most likely the post has actually gone through, and you are just stalled waiting for the redirection to the page where you would view the post you just make. So if you stop and do it again you'll get a double post. If you think you are stalled hit stop and try it again, or in the case of posting, hit stop and then check if it got posted. I know this is a pain, but this is a matter of network topology (and me not spending any money on hosting the site) rather than design (he says somewhat defensively.) I've heard that packet loss can occasionally reach 10% going through MAE West, although that seems a little hard to believe. Still, slow might mean lost rather than slow.
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Or maybe not. It is so hard to tell with our present set up, because there are hundreds (maybe over a thousand) different sites all being served off the same computer. So maybe it is something with the server itself, and not with the general net. I don't know. When I finally get our new server up we'll at least know the answer to some of these questions. Anyway, sorry about the slow going. Hopefully things will get better soon.
- jim 3-08-2001 8:01 pm
One more thing. Often times if you request a page (or try to post something) and it stalls for a really long time, the problem is that your packets got dropped somewhere. If you hit stop and try again, it will often go right through. If you have submitted a post and it is stalled while still on the posting screen, most likely the post has actually gone through, and you are just stalled waiting for the redirection to the page where you would view the post you just make. So if you stop and do it again you'll get a double post. If you think you are stalled hit stop and try it again, or in the case of posting, hit stop and then check if it got posted. I know this is a pain, but this is a matter of network topology (and me not spending any money on hosting the site) rather than design (he says somewhat defensively.) I've heard that packet loss can occasionally reach 10% going through MAE West, although that seems a little hard to believe. Still, slow might mean lost rather than slow.
- jim 3-08-2001 8:14 pm [1 comment]