Forum Host Reliability Problems

WagonMaster · Post by **WagonMaster** » Tue Sep 01, 2009 10:48 am

Is it just me or has anyone else been having great problems with browsing the forums and downloading files lately?

Now, admittedly, I'm on a dial-up connection, so I'm used to things being slow. But this problem is not speed, it's the reliability of the connection with the forum's server/host.

For example, despite not having any serious problems in the past with downloading large (e.g. 800KB) files from the forums, I've been unable to download the latest release candidate of 'IR.exe'. This has gone on for many days now. The download just dies after some random amount of data downloaded.

In fact, even basic browsing of the forum site has been incredibly unreliable lately. I often cannot view a simple thread without having my browser (Firefox) report "The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading.", forcing me to reload the page at least once and sometimes multiple times! Even when I limit the number of pages loading simultaneously to just 1 connection to the host, it still seems very unreliable.

This JP1 forum is the only site which seems to be exhibiting this behavior (well, besides the Radio Shack website, which has always had a similar issue), so I'm assuming there's nothing wrong on my end.

Anyone else experiencing such problems?

And, while I'm on the topic, is there any way to make the file downloads work with an interrupted retrieval? In other words, I frequently use 'wget -c filename' to fetch a file (under Linux, but Windows has a 'wget' utility too). Unfortunately, if the file transfer is interrupted (which it often is, as described above), I cannot resume the file transfer from the point it left off (which is the point of the '-c' [continue] option). This works fine on most sites, but I assume the phpBB stuff is somehow breaking this. Any ideas on a way to improve that?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.....

Regards,
Bill

gentzel · Post by **gentzel** » Tue Sep 01, 2009 12:30 pm

I have definitely noticed some issues as well, including PHP errors from the BB software.

Post by **mathdon** » Tue Sep 01, 2009 12:58 pm

In the past few days I've also had reliability problems. I always begin by checking "View posts since last visit", but I've had a number of occasions lately where I've clicked on the website, the browser (IE7) has started to load, suddenly said the load is completed, but nothing appears. I try again, find there are no posts since my last visit, but the last visit is timed to be just one minute ago. So a connection was made the first time, but apparently aborted without me doing anything. Very annoying.
_______________
Graham

Post by **ElizabethD** » Tue Sep 08, 2009 2:12 pm

Yesterday the site was down.
Over the past several days initial connection takes over a minute, uploading files takes over a minute (today 2min28sec), navigating from one post to another takes over 30sec. All very inconvenient.

The speed can vary. There are moments when everything is instantenous, but those are rare indeed. I suspect the servers are busy.

No dialup here, I got FIOS. Tracert sometimes shows a longish last hop delay, but I think the delays are within the servers running the database.

EDIT: It took 1m30sec to post this message, 58sec to view and start writing this edit timing information.

WagonMaster · Post by **WagonMaster** » Tue Sep 08, 2009 2:27 pm

ElizabethD wrote:but I think the delays are within the servers running the database.

That would be my guess too, based on the times that I see the worst delays usually being when it's doing something that I expect would require a pull from the database as opposed to some static content.

mathdon wrote:I always begin by checking "View posts since last visit", but I've had a number of occasions lately where I've clicked on the website, the browser (IE7) has started to load, suddenly said the load is completed, but nothing appears. I try again, find there are no posts since my last visit, but the last visit is timed to be just one minute ago. So a connection was made the first time, but apparently aborted without me doing anything. Very annoying.

This happened to me just the other day. Since there's no easy way to then determine what posts are new (other than tediously checking the dates of last post on each forum section), it got me thinking: I wonder if there's some way (i.e.. in this phpBB software) to have a simple list of links to the last 'n' posts, regardless of which section the post was made in, and (of course) regardless of your last login, where 'n' is something (maybe even user-configurable) from say 10 to 100. That would go a long way to alleviating that specific frustration we've encountered.

Bill

Post by **vickyg2003** » Tue Sep 08, 2009 2:47 pm

Since there's no easy way to then determine what posts are new (other than tediously checking the dates of last post on each forum section), it got me thinking: I wonder if there's some way (i.e.. in this phpBB software) to have a simple list of links to the last 'n' posts, regardless of which section the post was made in, and (of course) regardless of your last login, where 'n' is something (maybe even user-configurable) from say 10 to 100. That would go a long way to alleviating that specific frustration we've encountered.

I bookmark this link and then I can find out everything new in the last day.

https://www.hifi-remote.com/forums/searc ... rch_time=1

Post by **The Robman** » Tue Sep 08, 2009 3:09 pm

All these issues are because of the crap ISP that I'm using, but it's not a simple task to move this site over to my godaddy server because of the forum and it's database and the file section.

But once I do get around to moving the site to my other server, the performance will be GREATLY improved.

WagonMaster · Post by **WagonMaster** » Tue Sep 08, 2009 5:55 pm

vickyg2003 wrote:I bookmark this link and then I can find out everything new in the last day.
https://www.hifi-remote.com/forums/searc ... rch_time=1

Oooo, perfect! Just what the doctor ordered! A thousand "Thank You"s, Vicky!!!

The Robman wrote:All these issues are because of the crap ISP that I'm using, but it's not a simple task to move this site over to my godaddy server because of the forum and it's database and the file section.

But once I do get around to moving the site to my other server, the performance will be GREATLY improved.

Thanks for the info, Rob. It's nice to know that you already know what the problem is and that it's not something weird on my end! I'll patiently await the site transfer!

Regards,
Bill