Slow website

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.

Quote from: Pongo on December 17, 2014, 07:22:05 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.

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.

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.

I think this is done by Google to sway people away. This site is ridiculously slow!!!!

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.

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 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. 

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.

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.

Seems to be faster today?   

Seems to be faster today?

10 bucks says they rebooted the server

Seems to be faster today?

Yes. Much better. Thanks for the improvement whatever you had to do !

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.

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.

Sometimes it takes me literally minutes to load a page.  You feel lucky about only having to wait 10 or 15 seconds. 

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.

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.

Up to 16 seconds delay today.

Some ping info:
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


The performance of the website has been much better for a while now. Whatever whoever did to fix the problem, thanks!

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 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. 

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.

The performance of the website has been much better for a while now. Whatever whoever did to fix the problem, thanks!

You are welcome

I use several websites for reference.

But why is this website the only one I have found that has this problem ?

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

It's the aether slowing your flat electrons down. Globe websites don't have this problem

Maybe the acceleration rate of the UA is slowing down and not pushing the data as fast as it used to be ?

Let's stay on topic. This is S&C.