An entirely reasonable and sensible suggestion. 67 forums though. Roughly 40 gigs of bare text on file at any one time and never just single user working on search.
As you suggest, it's all down to server loading despite us keeping lean and mean and running as much of the system as possible on unix.
PPRuNe Dispatch may be able to step in with some current stats - we monitor the loads and usage on a minute be minute basis and are always reviewing our efforts.
The real answer appears to lie in the direction of yet another server and backbone upgrade. Ultimately though a new basis for the software seems the way forward. Pretty front end to an entirely unix based database so that every page request is really no different to a search - it's all an SQL query.
Crashdive created a proof of concept model a couple of years ago but got dragged into the flying side of things at just the wrong time (for us anyway
) He's simply been too busy with work commitments to further develop the project.
Commercial efforts have meantime switched along similar lines and we will look very carefully at anything coming to the market.
Rob