The Flat Earth Society

The Flat Earth Society => Suggestions & Concerns => Topic started by: Cartesian on November 30, 2014, 11:02:28 AM

Title: Slow website
Post by: Cartesian on November 30, 2014, 11:02:28 AM
Hi all, I haven't visited this site for ages. I noticed that now it is much slower to navigate than before. Or is it just me?
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: guv on November 30, 2014, 11:06:20 AM
I think it has been slow for a few days. Digit stuff I recon.
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: Space Cowgirl on November 30, 2014, 01:53:35 PM
I blame it on NASA.
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: ausGeoff on December 06, 2014, 05:51:52 AM
The site's server is running at the speed of a turtle through molasses at the moment—5/6/7 December.

Can somebody at admin please take a look?  Thanks.    :)
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: Son of Orospu on December 06, 2014, 08:11:47 AM
Yes, it has been very slow for the last several years.  I wish this would be fixed.  Maybe Parsifal has some suggestions? 
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: hoppy on December 06, 2014, 12:40:05 PM
Yes, it has been very slow for the last several years.  I wish this would be fixed.  Maybe Parsifal has some suggestions?
I think his suggestion is tfes.org.
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: Cartesian on December 07, 2014, 02:02:26 AM
I noticed that it's a bit faster today with 166 Guests, 21 Users (1 Hidden)
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: JimmyTheCrab on December 08, 2014, 02:36:29 AM
It runs like shit.

Someone needs to liaise with the hosting company...but I guess this isn't going to happen.
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: ausGeoff on December 08, 2014, 05:41:34 AM
Pinging the server gives me a RTT of 250ms average.  There's the answer.

    ???
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: Dinosaur Neil on December 11, 2014, 09:03:48 AM
Is Daniel still in charge? He was always very disinterested in site maintenance.
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: markjo on December 11, 2014, 11:46:21 AM
I hope that the reunification thing goes through soon so that we can get Parsifal and PizzaPlanet to give the site a decent tune up.
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: Dinosaur Neil on December 11, 2014, 04:30:21 PM
I hope that the reunification thing goes through soon so that we can get Parsifal and PizzaPlanet to give the site a decent tune up.

Er... wasn't Pizzaplanet banned for a year due to deliberately sabotaging the site? Are you sure he's the best person to do that?
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: markjo on December 11, 2014, 05:03:45 PM
I hope that the reunification thing goes through soon so that we can get Parsifal and PizzaPlanet to give the site a decent tune up.

Er... wasn't Pizzaplanet banned for a year due to deliberately sabotaging the site? Are you sure he's the best person to do that?
He was a framed by the conspiracy.
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: PizzaPlanet on December 14, 2014, 01:55:12 AM
Er... wasn't Pizzaplanet banned for a year due to deliberately sabotaging the site? Are you sure he's the best person to do that?
I'm confident that I've proven my competence throughout the year at the sister site (https://www.%74%66%65%73.org). Whether or not you choose to believe that I'm a super hot-shot malicious destructor is entirely up to you, but regardless of that both sides decided to put this incident aside for the greater good.
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: Cartesian on December 14, 2014, 02:08:00 AM
I wasn't there when the incident happened so I can't comment on that. But one thing is for sure, the speed of this website really sucks!
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: ausGeoff on December 14, 2014, 02:25:03 AM
I wasn't there when the incident happened so I can't comment on that. But one thing is for sure, the speed of this website really sucks!

Unfortunately, it seems to be deteriorating every day.  I dunno why the sysops here don't do something about it.    ???
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: PizzaPlanet on December 14, 2014, 03:54:27 AM
Primarily because there aren't any sysops here at the present.
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: robintex on December 17, 2014, 11:32:22 AM
I visit a lot of other websites from time to time.

This one is the only one that seems to have this problem.

Why is that ?
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: Son of Orospu on December 17, 2014, 12:01:06 PM
I visit a lot of other websites from time to time.

This one is the only one that seems to have this problem.

Why is that ?

Primarily because there aren't any sysops here at the present.
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: Pongo on December 17, 2014, 07:22:05 PM
Pinging the server gives me a RTT of 250ms average.  There's the answer.

    ???

How many pings did you send to get this average? Four? That's entirely too small a sample size. You need at least thirty data points to get a proper average.
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: Orifiel on December 17, 2014, 07:24:03 PM
Pinging the server gives me a RTT of 250ms average.  There's the answer.

    ???

How many pings did you send to get this average? Four? That's entirely too small a sample size. You need at least thirty data points to get a proper average.

How do you ping this and calculate it? (Mac)

Website is like...13x faster now! :D
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: ausGeoff on December 18, 2014, 06:10:54 AM

How many pings did you send to get this average? Four? That's entirely too small a sample size. You need at least thirty data points to get a proper average.

I ping it most days.  The average ping for most other servers is around 45ms RTT.  I've been using the internet for around 25 years, so I do have some idea of what I'm doing LOL.
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: 29silhouette on December 18, 2014, 08:40:34 AM
Yeah, if everyone just moved to TFES, that would be great.  Here I click on things, and then work on other stuff until the page finally loads. 
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: guv on December 19, 2014, 01:55:53 AM
Someone must have fed the server flat cookies.
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: markjo on December 19, 2014, 08:21:43 AM
Hmm...  I wonder if the fact that there are currently 200 guests and 45 users has anything to do with the site's performance.  I looked at a few of these new "users" and it looks like they might be spambots that just haven't posted anything yet.
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: Cartesian on December 19, 2014, 09:01:22 AM
Or maybe due to some Denial Of Service attack which forces the provider to throttle the access to the website.
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: robintex on December 19, 2014, 09:46:08 AM
Yeah, if everyone just moved to TFES, that would be great.  Here I click on things, and then work on other stuff until the page finally loads.

That's what I have been doing this morning.  Every other website worked just fine. It is only this one that is tediously slow. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. LOL. Well, not really, something is rotten on The Flat Earth Society Forum website.
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: Lemmiwinks on December 19, 2014, 01:51:03 PM
Yeah, if everyone just moved to TFES, that would be great.  Here I click on things, and then work on other stuff until the page finally loads.

I moved over there, but man the RE people are massively out numbered there, less fruit cakes and far more people who have actually thought through the FET.

Also they seem to actually have debate skills there. I'm impressed.
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: PizzaPlanet on December 19, 2014, 02:31:02 PM
Hmm...  I wonder if the fact that there are currently 200 guests and 45 users has anything to do with the site's performance.  I looked at a few of these new "users" and it looks like they might be spambots that just haven't posted anything yet.
It's going to be a big factor, but likely not the actual cause. A well-run site should be able to handle this sort of traffic without any major issues. Reducing the bot traffic would likely help things temporarily, but that's not really the way to solve the problem.

Also, the reason so many spambots register here but don't post is that the spam prevention used here doesn't really target registrations. The solution at tfes.org takes a very different approach - we try to stop spambots from registering, so we don't have to worry about them trying to post.
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: markjo on December 19, 2014, 05:53:18 PM
A well-run site...
You're new here, aren't you?
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: ausGeoff on December 20, 2014, 04:25:44 AM
Yeah, if everyone just moved to TFES, that would be great.  Here I click on things, and then work on other stuff until the page finally loads.

Yeppers... me too.  I get a lot more done that way LOL.

Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: Parsifal on December 26, 2014, 10:39:28 PM

How many pings did you send to get this average? Four? That's entirely too small a sample size. You need at least thirty data points to get a proper average.

I ping it most days.  The average ping for most other servers is around 45ms RTT.  I've been using the internet for around 25 years, so I do have some idea of what I'm doing LOL.

Evidently not. The distance from Sydney, Australia (where I live) to Fremont, California (a hub of activity on the Pacific) is approximately 40 light-milliseconds. A RTT from Australia to any server in the USA (where both this site and tfes.org are hosted) is going to be at least 80 ms; practically, it will be more because you don't have a straight-line optic fibre connection to the remote host.

Packet round-trip times have absolutely nothing to do with why this site is (was?) slow. It's all slowness in the application, not the network.
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: Cartesian on December 27, 2014, 05:07:08 AM
It's all slowness in the application, not the network.

I still believe that its slowness was due to a rogue attack rather than application design. It was sluggish with just few users and fast with a lot of users. Its speed didn't depend on its apparent load, so it couldn't have been simply caused by application design.
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: Parsifal on December 27, 2014, 06:05:23 AM
I still believe that its slowness was due to a rogue attack rather than application design. It was sluggish with just few users and fast with a lot of users. Its speed didn't depend on its apparent load, so it couldn't have been simply caused by application design.

I didn't say it was the application design, I said it was the application (as opposed to the network stack) that was slow, for reasons unknown. I won't speculate as to specific causes, as it's always difficult to pin things down without the ability to troubleshoot directly.
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: R.W.Rock on July 31, 2015, 09:15:07 AM
I think this is done by Google to sway people away. This site is ridiculously slow!!!!
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: PizzaPlanet on August 02, 2015, 03:43:49 PM
I think this is done by Google to sway people away. This site is ridiculously slow!!!!
Yes, I'm sure that's how it works.
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: flounder on August 03, 2015, 08:38:26 PM
I for one would like to thank the site administrators for slowing down the response time. It takes anywhere from 20 to 30 seconds for a response to my mouse clicks. That's just perfect for my slower neural net.
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: robintex on August 04, 2015, 11:47:00 AM
I for one would like to thank the site administrators for slowing down the response time. It takes anywhere from 20 to 30 seconds for a response to my mouse clicks. That's just perfect for my slower neural net.

I have timed the delay today to be about 15 seconds today at this time. Other websites such as tfes.org are almost instantaneous responses. 
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: Rayzor on August 05, 2015, 06:08:21 AM
I'd guess something is hogging the cpu,  the admins need to look closely at what processes are running,   

I wouldn't be surprised to find that  the site maintenance is a bit hit and miss, and it's possible that someone has hacked the server,  one of my son's servers got hacked last year,  and  when asked to look at it for him,  I found a number of bitcoin miners running,   they exploited a known PHP scripting vulnerability,  and they also managed to insert a cron-job that re-created the bitcoin miners if they were deleted.   No other damage,  and  the bitcoin miner process names were not immediately suspicious.

Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: Dog on August 06, 2015, 09:11:10 AM
I'd guess something is hogging the cpu,  the admins need to look closely at what processes are running,   

I wouldn't be surprised to find that  the site maintenance is a bit hit and miss, and it's possible that someone has hacked the server,  one of my son's servers got hacked last year,  and  when asked to look at it for him,  I found a number of bitcoin miners running,   they exploited a known PHP scripting vulnerability,  and they also managed to insert a cron-job that re-created the bitcoin miners if they were deleted.   No other damage,  and  the bitcoin miner process names were not immediately suspicious.

That wouldn't be surprising. Or maybe it just needs a reboot.
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: Rayzor on August 13, 2015, 08:09:03 PM
Seems to be faster today?   

Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: Dog on August 13, 2015, 09:51:20 PM
Seems to be faster today?

10 bucks says they rebooted the server
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: robintex on August 15, 2015, 07:50:16 PM
Seems to be faster today?

Yes. Much better. Thanks for the improvement whatever you had to do !
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: EnglshGentleman on August 17, 2015, 11:45:30 PM
Maybe I don't know what a slow website feels like, but it is still taking like 10-15 seconds to load a page for me.
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: robintex on August 18, 2015, 10:14:14 AM
Maybe I don't know what a slow website feels like, but it is still taking like 10-15 seconds to load a page for me.

That seems to be the problem and it seems to be only on this website. I thought it was better yesterday, but the problems seems to be back again. When you post or try to load it should be almost instantaneous but it is taking 10 to 15 seconds as you mentioned. I don't know if it has to do with the time of day or the activity. It seemed to be acting fairly normal yesterday evening but it's running slow at this time.
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: Son of Orospu on August 18, 2015, 08:03:19 PM
Sometimes it takes me literally minutes to load a page.  You feel lucky about only having to wait 10 or 15 seconds. 
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: sceptimatic on August 19, 2015, 08:11:36 AM
It's becoming fat too irritating to post. This has been going on for a good few weeks with only the odd few hours being bearable for quicker posting.
It appears the admin don't give a shit about the place. Maybe because it's just a forum and not the society itself.

It'll be full of bots soon and no posters.
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: robintex on August 20, 2015, 08:52:18 AM
Everyone migrate to tfes.org.
They care over there.

Even with flat earth fantasies , most of the threads do make some sense on tfes.org.

I've been making some observations. I have observed response times on this website have varied from 3 to 16 seconds. It seems to be random.
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: robintex on August 21, 2015, 10:43:58 AM
Up to 16 seconds delay today.
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: Misero on August 23, 2015, 09:01:31 AM
Some ping info:
Code: [Select]
Pinging [url=http://www.theflatearthsociety.org.cdn.cloudflare.net]www.theflatearthsociety.org.cdn.cloudflare.net[/url] [104.28.28.107] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 104.28.28.107: bytes=32 time=16ms TTL=56
Reply from 104.28.28.107: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=56
Reply from 104.28.28.107: bytes=32 time=21ms TTL=56
Reply from 104.28.28.107: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=56

Ping statistics for 104.28.28.107:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 14ms, Maximum = 21ms, Average = 17ms
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: Alpha2Omega on December 12, 2015, 07:02:55 PM
The performance of the website has been much better for a while now. Whatever whoever did to fix the problem, thanks!
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: robintex on January 30, 2016, 08:04:23 PM
It seems the problem is back again. (30 January 2016 10:00 PM CDST)

I used "modify" to correct some typos and then "save" . It only took 45 seconds for the post to reappear again after hitting "save." !!!! :(

Once again, it's not my computer . All the other websites act almost instantaneous.
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: Son of Orospu on January 31, 2016, 07:05:00 AM
It seems the problem is back again. (30 January 2016 10:00 PM CDST)

I used "modify" to correct some typos and then "save" . It only took 45 seconds for the post to reappear again after hitting "save." !!!! :(

Once again, it's not my computer . All the other websites act almost instantaneous.

It seems like we are being hit by another DDoS attack.  One of the spambots I got rid of this morning even had a link in his signature that said "How to stop DDoS attack."  Of course, I did not click the link. 
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: getrealzommb on January 31, 2016, 04:47:39 PM
Jroa, I was mooching through the members online earlier and I swear there was about 9-10 new names online. clicking through them they had all 0 forum posts and all were "viewing the profile of" themselves. I have very little experience of forum design or web stuff in general but I guess that's a bit odd. something to do with an attack? don't know if this helps.
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: Username on January 31, 2016, 06:23:56 PM
The performance of the website has been much better for a while now. Whatever whoever did to fix the problem, thanks!
You are welcome
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: robintex on January 31, 2016, 09:48:45 PM
I use several websites for reference.

But why is this website the only one I have found that has this problem ?
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: Username on January 31, 2016, 11:58:08 PM
I use several websites for reference.

But why is this website the only one I have found that has this problem ?
Currently we have 564 guests and that has held steady for hours. I can only assume we are being DDOS right now.

We do have some underlying issues that affect our speed. I've solved some of those but we really need to set up our servers a bit better. This is on my roadmap once I get some time+money
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: fizzix on February 01, 2016, 01:22:49 PM
It's the aether slowing your flat electrons down. Globe websites don't have this problem
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: robintex on February 01, 2016, 07:58:45 PM
Maybe the acceleration rate of the UA is slowing down and not pushing the data as fast as it used to be ?
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: Pongo on February 02, 2016, 07:00:15 AM
Let's stay on topic. This is S&C.
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: Lonesome Crow on February 05, 2016, 04:26:31 PM
I'm here from the sister site tfes.org, and yea-- I'm definitely noticing a drop in speed.

It's not awful or anything, but it's undeniably slower.
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: Son of Orospu on February 06, 2016, 08:31:13 AM
DDoS attack.  Apparently, someone is butthurt over the shape of the Earth. 
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: robintex on February 06, 2016, 05:54:12 PM
Why does just this site seem to be targeted since there is no effect noticed on the sister site tfes.org ?
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: Son of Orospu on February 06, 2016, 11:18:24 PM
Why does just this site seem to be targeted since there is no effect noticed on the sister site tfes.org ?

Are you implying that someone on the sister site is causing the DDoS attack?  Do you have any evidence to back up your implications? 
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: Slemon on February 07, 2016, 02:38:40 AM
Why does just this site seem to be targeted since there is no effect noticed on the sister site tfes.org ?
Because the kind of trolls that'd attack this site probably wouldn't read enough of it to know there's even a sister site.
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: robintex on February 07, 2016, 07:58:34 AM
Why does just this site seem to be targeted since there is no effect noticed on the sister site tfes.org ?

Are you implying that someone on the sister site is causing the DDoS attack?  Do you have any evidence to back up your implications?

No.....Just wondering why there is so much difference between the two websites ? The other site just
 Updated to a new  format.
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: Son of Orospu on February 07, 2016, 11:01:07 AM
Why does just this site seem to be targeted since there is no effect noticed on the sister site tfes.org ?

Are you implying that someone on the sister site is causing the DDoS attack?  Do you have any evidence to back up your implications?

No.....Just wondering why there is so much difference between the two websites ? The other site just
 Updated to a new  format.

The other site barely has a half dozen people on line at any given time. Are you seriously questioning why a site that has so little traffic runs faster than one that  has hundreds of guests on line at any given time?  Do you understand what bandwidth means?
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: Dinosaur Neil on February 07, 2016, 11:17:39 AM
Why does just this site seem to be targeted since there is no effect noticed on the sister site tfes.org ?

[libel] Because we allowed Pizza Planet back after his previous ban for doing the same thing. [/libel]
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: Son of Orospu on February 07, 2016, 11:54:28 AM
PP is not as bad as he used to be. 
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: Dinosaur Neil on February 08, 2016, 04:25:47 PM
PP is not as bad as he used to be.

That statement could be re-worded as "PP used to be even worse than he is now."
Title: Re: Slow website
Post by: palmerito0 on March 27, 2016, 09:31:22 PM
Has this site been under a constant DDoS attack for the last month?

Trying to see someone's posts just says "server under heavy stress" after a 15 second wait.

Maybe its time to add some non-intrusive advertising? Then you guys could pay for better hosting service with the traffic you've been getting lately (around 400k per month).