Why is this site so slow ?

[Nilsen]

Last day this forum takes forever to load on my PC.
Not any others do -
is there a problem ?

sorry if it is wrong too ask in here . but dont know where too ask - as it is only this forum where i have this prob.

[jmbboss]

Dont know. Sorry cant help. When my computer runs slow, I have the computer tech at my job look at it and "clean it up." But then again, there have been times it has only been slow for certain websites. I get more frustrated when I am about to make a lens or accessory purchase online and it runs slow...

[Hellashot]

Probably popularity. 1 year ago, average users using was about 150 at a time, right now there are 1900 users on here. And I don't see any ads on here funding the site.

[Ronald S. Jr.]

Still quick as a bunny for me. Always has been. I'm led to believe it's an overload on your end.

[Mark_Cohran]

Loads fine for me except during times when there's peak usage. That's to be expected.

Mark

[T.D.]

It's been incredibly slow for me lately as well. Not sure why. Very unusual. The rest of the net doesn't seem to be affect for me.

[SuzyView]

This is so cool. I am on my Motorola Q writing this. I am with Ron on this one. Your server if not DSL or cable will not download pictures at a fast rate. Sorry.

[thekid24]

I'll put my vote in the 'run fast for me' box.Im not sure why it would be running slow for you.

[Nilsen]

This is so cool. I am on my Motorola Q writing this. I am with Ron on this one. Your server if not DSL or cable wil ot download pictures at a fast rate. Sorry.
Maybe I misunderstand - (bacause of my bad Englsih ) but i do have a DSL connection. Tis forum has been quick as u could wish all the time - until last days .
But . its stil a fantastic place :-))

[SuzyView]

English not a problem. You are doing well. At certain times of the day, when many people are on, the whole system can be crowded. Also, if more people sign up in a certain location that uses one junction, it can cause the internet to be slow. My son has cable internet in his apartment, but the server is small and doesn't want to upgrade their hardware. He loves being home and even with the wireless connection, it's faster than when he's at his apartment.

[cjm]

You think this site is slow?
Well stop in at Fred Miranda and you will see slow to a crawl.

[Tom W]

A couple of minutes ago, this site stalled. It's rare, but occasionally, it happens. That may be what you've experienced. I've seen it a few times here.

Fred's site is just plain slow. He needs to upgrade the server, but he doesn't want to pay out-of-pocket and he doesn't want to charge for his site.

[LindaSgee]

This site is lightening fast compared to another forum I visit. I just posted a similar thread there about it.

This is so cool. I am on my Motorola Q writing this. I am with Ron on this one. Your server if not DSL or cable will not download pictures at a fast rate. Sorry.

Wait until you see what the new iPhone can do! My husband LOVED his new (November '06) Motorola Q until he saw Steve Jobs' keynote speech on the iPhone (Apple). Since he signed a two-year contract with Verizon, and the iPhone will only be through Cingular, he's going to do BOTH he's so impressed with it.

[Dan-o]

Yes I agree it is slow (not as bad as FM). It is slow compaired to most sites. I have a 15mbs fiber optic so it isn't my connection.

[mspringfield]

My experience with this site and FM has been a mixed bag. Both will slow to a crawl one minute and then be back to blazing fast a few minutes later. Although FM is much worse than here. If I remember correctly the folks at FM diagnosed an issue a few months ago with one of the photo hosting sites eating up bandwidth when photos were linked from there. I seem to remember that it was photobucket but don't quote me. As I post this I have FM opened in another tab and both are super fast.

Michael

[Tsmith]

Yes I agree it is slow (not as bad as FM). It is slow compaired to most sites. I have a 15mbs fiber optic so it isn't my connection.

Thats pretty much my same exact experience as sometimes it takes patience waiting for a page to load and I have high speed broadband cable service - 6.2 Mbps

and I'll add its not all the time its like this + my Internet Files except personal cookies like the one used here are dumped each time I close my browser so its not clogged with spyware and junk stuff.

[kav]

It's very intermittent for me, was very slow loading about 1hour ago.

K.

[Woolburr]

POTN has been running slow for me since Friday...the only site that is acting this way, it is running as slow if not slower than FM. I have a 5+mb cable connection...so speed typically is not an issue. Lots of timeouts on this site over the weekend. Guess popularity carries a price!

[belmondo]

I don't pretend to understand the mechanics of the internet, but last night I noticed that some pages were very slow loading on POTN. Others loaded very quickly. Among the pages that were slow loading were some that contained images I had uploaded to an image hosting service, and had linked with [img] tags.

I also noticed that some websites just weren't there including my ISP. This went on for about a half hour, then it cleared up. My ISP came back online, I received a bunch of email that had apparently been building up in my inbox, and all the links to my posted images came back.

Probably not a connection to the problems you guys have been having, but when it was happening, my first thought was that POTN might be having a problem. Now, it appears they didn't.

[SuzyView]

iPhone, that sounds great, but yes, I just signed a 2 year contract with VerizonWireless and it is a pain to switch. The iPhone is also around $500 and I can get a laptop for that! My Motorola was basically free after the rebate and my credit for renewing (I've used Verizon since it started with wireless). The idea of getting better connection is fun, but really, $500 for a phone, camera, MP3, etc. seems a little extravagant. Don't quote me because I may just change my mind once it really gets into production.

[BradT0517]

So far POTN has been fast for me and at the time most of you were posting here it was also fast then

[Pekka]

Let me say something here. There is a lot going under the hood and last few days I have been testing few settings to get the forum mails running more smoothly. Testing means usually that I need to restart other services too (to clean buffers) and if Mysql needs to be rebooted it will take few hours or sometimes even days to get to full speed after that (speedup buffers fill and collect data). I try to avoid unneccessary testing on this server but sometimes trying out is only way to find out what works and what does not.

With current settings (done about 12 hours ago) server runs 30% more database queries per second and mails go out smoothly, so I think I'll keep it mostly like this for a while. There will still be some http server reboots which halt server for about 5 seconds at a time, this week.

The main overall culprits in smooth operation under heavy load are http server software and attachment storage location, both of which will be addressed this year. Hardware is usually not a problem. For example, disk usage is 2.5% and CPU 25% at peak time, no disk swapping going on at all. The server makes about 1000 TCP connections each second and does ca. 140 database queries/second in peak time, with lots of headroom. All my status logs and graphs show that current setup is smooth at peak time and there are no hiccups other than known ones (backups and other maintenance scripts).

Some info:

normally a page should start loading in about 2 seconds or less, after you have clicked a link.
with popular topics it might take more time to view the page if the thread is getting new posts at that moment. Reads are locked while new posts are being written. Be patient.
submitting a new thread/post might be slower on peak hours, this is normal.
if a link does not open in 5 seconds click it again. This will assing you a new "slot" in page queue. Else you might just see after 15 second wait "unable to open...".
sometimes the slowdown is because Google ad server is slow.
sometimes slowdown is because embedded images do not load from other servers.
your internet connection speed is really not important, if you have 1mbs ADSL or more it will be sufficient. More important are DNS server(s) near you and that pipe from your ISP to POTN (which is located in Texas AFAIK) is working and fast.
if you have a shared connection make sure that the neighbor does not download warez and movies 24/7 and eat all the pipe from you.
POTN server provider has had a big merger lately and this might cause network problems. If you ping POTN and see routing problems please report traceroute to me with PM and I'll pass it to support.

[CannedHeat]

Generally, compared to other sites potn runs fine. It does experience very short (seconds) time out periods. During peak periods, there are thousands on the server. The latency is exasperated by the fact that many of those people are viewing high byte attached graphics. During peak periods, I have measured up to 10% packet loss on the server end but again, because of server load, it's to be expected. /Dan

[Pekka]

Generally, compared to other sites potn runs fine. It does experience very short (seconds) time out periods. During peak periods, there are thousands on the server. The latency is exasperated by the fact that many of those people are viewing high byte attached graphics. During peak periods, I have measured up to 10% packet loss on the server end but again, because of server load, it's to be expected. /Dan

When attachments are moved to another server the bandwidth pressure to this server will be significantly reduced which means more stable operation.

I know couple of solutions to moving attachments, but if you have done it with success please PM me for your solution! :)

Biggest resource eater is search feature in vBulletin, and this will be replaced with Sphinx search application this year. Sphinx has simpler search choices but that will be addressed when it evolves.

I have recently disabled boolean search as it started to be too slow with number of posts we have now.

[BrandonSi]

You think this site is slow?
Well stop in at Fred Miranda and you will see slow to a crawl.

I agreee.. FM can be unusable at times.. and I only go there for the buy/sell forums.

[Deazy]

This site is way slower than mine! It could be something to do with the server!

[BradT0517]

This site is way slower than mine! It could be something to do with the server!

Or it could be that for every person that is a member on your site there are 11101.125 members on POTN

[joegolf68]

I hear ya. Rarely, but at times, this site has had some slow downs. I don't know if they are close to their limit and the servers gets strained during busy times, but every once in a great while, I too have the issue.

[poloman]

I had a problem uploading attachments. My browser would time out while I was waiting for the upload applet to work. This was a consistent problem a few weeks ago. I started using flickr to host my pics and have had good luck ever since.

[SoaringUSAEagle]

I have never seen this site as slow as FM...

This site has only ever been slow for me maybe once...