WHEN will PPRUNE get a decent server?

[IO540]

The performance has been dreadful and is getting worse.

This website already takes ages to browse. The whole crumbling edifice should be moved to Usenet. It takes 10 to 20 times longer to read a thread here than it would take on Usenet.

[Dop]

Usenet? No way!
Usenet in my experience is too full of spammers and idiots.
It's no use to man nor beast.

I'd rather have a slow and occasionally unavailable PPRuNe than one on Usenet. thank you very much

[Aerobatic Flyer]

WHEN will PPRUNE get a decent server?

If it belonged to me, I'd answer "when the users are willing to pay for it!"

[IO540]

Dop

The whole internet is full of idiots; the extent to which you get them in Usenet depends on the quality of the general contributors in a given newsgroup. Some newsgroups are excellent.

Regards spam, most ISPs filter out 99% of usenet spam - it's easy to do so in an automated fashion.

Also Usenet is free so if you've got a fast connection you get the full benefit. This server is probably fast enough (any current-model PC is going to be fast enough) but I would guess is running on a 64k line :O

[Vedeneyev]

IO540 in that case why don't you help the cause and buy yourself a personal title - you certainly should the amount of bandwidth you use on here :)

[Fly Stimulator]

IO540,

Over 250 posts so far. Perhaps you should click there and order a Personal Title.

Then Danny would have a bit more funding for server upgrades.

In the meantime, there are numerous Usenet aviation groups already. There is no obvious impediment to those who don't like PPRuNe's format or performance from confining themselves to those.

Personally I think a web-based board is far better for PPRuNe.

[Timothy]

..perhaps when we see fewer statements like:

IO540
Over 250 posts so far. Perhaps I should
click here and order a Personal Title

;)

....it's only a few pounds from each of us and then Danny could buy the fastest server in the world!

Will

[PPRuNe Radar]

Latest news from the top is here:

PPRuNe Server Speed (http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=1133430#post1133430)

It is frustrating to us all, but then you get what you pay for in most cases ;)

[Evo]

Ah, the universal bandwidth-funding debate, and at the risk of the wrath of Danny... ;)


On one hand, we get this great website for free - why shouldn't we pay a bit to keep it going?

On the other hand, maybe it's just a business. OK, internet-based businesses aren't worth much right now, but they were a few years ago and maybe they will be again - hell, after the last couple of years my pension isn't worth that much either but I keep paying into that in the hope things will improve. When the second coming of tech stock arrives (hopefully a bit more sensibly than last time) a website with seventy thousand demographically-impressive users is going to be worth a bit. Without the registered users posting things PPRuNe is nothing at all, so why should we pay anything? Do I get an IOU for the 5% of my output (if i'm lucky ;) ) that's worth reading? No. Maybe all that bandwidth is an investment - risky, but potentially rewarding too - and, as the disclaimer goes, the value of your investment can go down as well as up.

Or on the other hand, maybe it's just a hobby? Expensive things :)

FWIW, I think Danny's got it about right. Subscriptions don't work if you expect the users to pay to provide the content - i think that the fact that a very financially-savvy webite like the UK Fool doesn't charge tells you something. You can pay a bit towards PPRuNe if you like (personally I prefer the PPRuNe fund for my guilt money, so no personal title). If not then fine, just don't moan about something you get for free.


edit: Maybe Danny should sell shares. I'd buy. Already own part of Southampton Football Club, and i'll never see anything back from that...! :)

[Gertrude the Wombat]

Well, I just tried to give some money to PPRuNe, but it's not very easy.

(1) I tried buying a personal title, but got stuck at the point where I had to give the same email address I gave when registering. I haven't a clue what that was! - I usually make up different email addresses for each site I regsiter at, but I never bother to write them down. (Although if I were less lazy I could poke around and see if it's in an email somewhere.)

(2) I considered buying one of those badges that was being sold a while back, but can't find out how to.

So I have failed to give PPRuNe any money today.

[IO540]

OK everyone, if everyone chipped in then the operator of this site could buy more bandwidth. But evidently I am not the only one who hasn't contributed, perhaps because this looks like a standard commercial site funded by popup adverts, like Fool and many others. The GA forum is just one of quite a number here and most likely most people just tolerate it, and then drop out.

But that's not the solution I was finally suggesting. Usenet is free, is very fast, it cannot be moderated but that just means people have to be more careful what they write, and one needs to be able to tolerate some jokers.

The only downside of Usenet is that it all gets archived into Google but since most people here use nicknames anyway, that doesn't matter.

Of course I cannot expect a commercial site to support my suggestion, so I won't say any more on the subject and I will now b****r off.

[Gertrude the Wombat]

We've done this one before. The answers haven't changed.

(1) Yer average punter can just about cope with the web and email but really doesn't want to be bothered with finding out what newsgroups are and how to configure a newsreader. Sure you can use a web interface like Google ... if you don't mind a six hour delay until posts become visible. "Fast?" - not.

(2) If you want to use existing newsgroups, then feel free - just go and do it. If you want a new set of PPRuNe branded newsgroups then how many years do you think it takes to propogate them to all the current users' ISPs? OK, so that's easily solved - set up a private news server and it can carry any groups you want. But of course that costs hardware and bandwidth, so not free, plus even harder for the non-techie punter to set up.

(3) It is not true that newsgroups cannot be moderated. There are plenty of public moderated groups - search for groups with "moderated" in their names. You can set up private groups on your own server to be moderated. You can require authentication on your own server, so you can track who's posting. Spambots that try to post to a private server with authentication switched on (does this ever happen??) will fail. If you have a private server which doesn't propogate anywhere you can even delete posts after they've appeared.

(4) Putting advertisements into every post in a newsgroup is really really irritating. So, no adverts. So, no advertising income to pay for the service, so we all have to chip in even more.

Everybody still with me? - if not, then that proves point (1).

I'm afraid that next time this is suggested the answers will still be the same.

(Running a parallel news server to serve up the contents of the forums via NNTP might be helpful as it would reduce bandwidth ... except that the service isn't bandwidth limited. And you'd somehow have to advertise this to users in such a way that advertisers never discovered its existence.)

[wbryce]

Im a sales administrator in one of the uks leading Webhosting Companys, its a family business with my mother as the CEO. (never work for your mom!!)

a website of this size is one hell of alot of money!

Just now theres 400 people browsing these forums, thats alot of CPU processing and data retrieval to be sent back over the internet.

Firstly, a site of this caliber would require a dedicated server with the latest specs on a extremely fast line.

For me to host this website i would budget it around £3400 per year for first year, this includes the price of the dedicated server.

This would get the website running super sonic speed! it then depends on what forum based software you use.

If the pprune admin would like me to try get a decent quote for him with some money off, im more than willing to investigate for him :-)

[MLS-12D]

It's not really all that bad. Sure we've all experienced problems (delays), but indeed it is free, so I don't mind.

Personally, I fall into Gertrude's (1) comment.

[NinjaBill]

I would pay £10 to £20 per year for a turbo pprune service, on a second server, and as part of the turbo pprune, there could be an option for all the web pages to loose the graphics and bright colours, so that it looked like I wasnt readling crap on the internet when i should be working!!!

In fact, I might evan be prepared to pay a monthly subscription service for this.... £3 a month by direct debit. I wouldnt notice the cash, but i would appreciate the extra speed.

Geoff

[DubTrub]

Perhaps £0.0001 per post (i.e 100 posts per penny) and Drapes can pay for the lot.

[JABI]

Don't think so....
Have you seen their advertising rates?
Plenty of cash coming in that way.
Oct 2002 issue of Flyer page 47-49 article on Capt.Pprune,
it's worth millions....
Maybe time for another upgrade.

[PPRuNe Towers]

Will, how about giving the readers a genuine quote to supply a dedicated server and running costs per month - our present one not the upgraded one we're working on now.

Present spec: 1U rack server. 2 by 1ghz processors: 1 gig memory: 2 by 30 gig scsi raid hard disks: daily dat back up: 24/7 tech support for reboots etc - we do the rest by remote and finally 400 gigs of bandwidth per month over a dedicated T1 line.

PPRuNe has an unnaturally high proportion of IT pros on board. There is a correlation between that industry and an interest in aviation. However, I've asked for an open and honest quote at commercial rates from one of our pros 7 time over the past 5 years to no avail. No one in the industry has felt able to allow readers to get an honest idea of the scale and costs inherent to this monster.

Will and any others in the IT business reading.

Would you please let PPRuNers know just what they're getting for free and so they can make up their own minds as to the value they get from us. Let PPRuNers make an educated assessment of what running the site entails.

If you feel unable to quote for the hardware for commercial reasons please tell PPRuNers the cost of the 400 gigs of bandwidth per month along with the backup and T1 line. If you're still shy about that would you at least giver readers a direct comparison to the type and scale of company that would need this type of server and throughput.

As to Evo's investment plans, well I suspect he should stick to the Southampton shares:uhoh: :uhoh: Think about it. PPRuNe's USP is the anonymity - especially for the pro aviators, Atcers and engineers it was set up for. Contracts and operations manuals have specific sections regarding this.

Therefore we have a mail list with a demographic advertisers and researchers would kill for. That's also why every e-mail address for PPRuNers is encrypted - IT pro's pull up the page source code and check for yourself - and that's the catch 22. Looking after our readers with a religous zeal is our strength and flogging the mail list would kill the site within days.

One last point - any of you can set up a website or newsgroup. Other than registering a domain it won't cost you a penny. There is nothing to stop any of you building a better mousetrap - have a go. PPRuNe started exactly the same way - through discontent at what was out there. There is no written law that we are the best, will remain that way or that you can't do better. Just bear this in mind PPRuNe is where it is through Danny and I putting in 5 hour days while working and 11 hour days when we're not. That's gone on for 8 unpaid years to get where we are now. Other than that it's a doddle :E :E :E

Regards
Rob Lloyd

[Circuit Basher]

Is it one or 2 T's in 'bitterness', Rob??! ;) :)

A heartfelt post and I think you know that the aviating world is a greater place for what you and Danny have achieved.

PS I was determined before Xmas to order a personal title, but only got around to setting up a PayPal account on Monday and am still waiting for the initial 4 digit code to activate the account. Once I have that, I will be ordering a title. Until now, I have always given PayPal a wide berth, preferring to use NoChex - unfortunately, PPRuNe only accepts PayPal.

Rob - you and Danny will get your rewards somewhere, but maybe Danny will not get his from above if some of the GatBash rumours / pictures from previous years are to be believed!! ;) ;)

[bookworm]

1U rack server.

tiny!

2 by 1ghz processors:

flimsy!

1 gig memory:

cramped!

2 by 30 gig scsi raid hard disks:

puny!

and finally 400 gigs of bandwidth per month over a dedicated T1 line.

Ah. Er, yes, er, hmm. Did I, er, mention the, er, processors?... :)

Seriously, that's a huge commitment of resource, to provide a great facility for us all, free at the point of delivery. Keep up the good work!

[PPRuNe Towers]

Not bitter CB - no time for that. Just very disappointed that over 5 years none of the IT pro's here or on the Australian forums would give PPRuNers an independent and unbiased indication of the scale we're working on. Not even a comparison such as 400 gigs of bandwidth is equivalent to a company of X size/ brand recognition and would be operated by Y number of employees.

Ah bookworm, you hit the nail right on the head. The great server that is to come will provide a minor Charles Atlas course [2 by 2.5 gig CPU's and fastrer scsi disks] but the bandwidth is the killer that the non IT types can't imagine or conceive. That's the reason for the request for some unbiased third party comparisons so they can get a handle on why performance is a struggle both technically and financially.

Regards,
Rob

[NinjaBill]

400Gb per month is sooooo much bandwith, however i cannot see any reason to need a dedicated T1 (or E1 as they are in europe) for your internet access. A co-located server an a large hosting centre would probably bet fit youre needs, as bandwith could burst at peak times (ie lunch time), as a server of that spec is capable of quite a high data throughput,well in excess of the 2.0 Mb of a dedicated E1 circuit

As an example of price, UK2 (www.uk2.net) cost their bandwith at 99p per Gb, which is about £5k/yr + cost of server location of about £1k/yr, + cost of backup (sorry i cant estimate a price for that)

However, I do think that there would be a market for pprune subscription, where by one could pay a fixed monthly cost to have access to a less utilised server, and have less ads per page, and if possible, a low colour or text based version, of pprune, so i can read it more easly while at work

NB

[Timothy]

We reckon about £2k to buy the server, plus whatever the database is (I think I have seen from error messages that it's MySQL, which is cheap, but a grown-up DBMS on a 2 processor system, it would probably be another £2.5k)

Co-located hosting is definitely the way to go. We reckon that you will get 1/4 of a rack (usually the minimum) for £10-12k per annum with the service and bandwidth required. This would give you a 2Mb "average" but the possibility of "bursting" much higher, provided that it didn't happen too often.

We can pass on some quotes we got last year from a number of co-located people (we ended up with UUNet) if that helps.

Will

[IO540]

I started this thread and said I wouldn't come back to it after the reaction my comment caused. I apologise for any offence caused; I simply assumed this is a commercial site supported by popup adverts. In light of the subsequent posts I can't resist making some technical points:

(1) On the assumption that one is after a non-profit discussion site for pilots, I have not seen anything yet ruling out Usenet for this. Lots of people have impressions of Usenet and most of them are well out of date. Open Usenet is free, comes with massive bandwidth (courtesy of warez and porn, the typical ISP's usenet feed is 50-100GB per day), is mostly free of spam in non-binary groups, is anonymous (short of a court order or a police request served on the ISP, and even then there are ways to thwart that), is very fast (worldwide propagation takes minutes), and most importantly is fast to use. Every other www-based discussion system involves a lot of time getting in and out of threads. There really are many people who could make a useful contribution who don't have the time.

(2) The server described here costs relative peanuts, as would a much more powerful one. But is the server the bottleneck?

(3) Where is the real bottleneck? Is it the database transaction time on the server, or is it the bandwidth to the ISP, or is it something else?

Someone mentioned 400 people online, but most of those are silent. They are reading or (very occassionally) writing and all that is client side activity.

If the bandwidth to the ISP is the problem, one could do what most chatrooms have been doing for years: have a client side program (Windows executable for most people, Java for the remainder) which implements the "discussion group" user interface and the data flowing over the internet would be just the changes. I haven't been to a chatroom for years (and if I was I wouldn't own up to it nowadays :O ) but this is very old stuff, and the speed increase is dramatic. The decrease in per-GB billing cost would be equally dramatic. But someone would have to write the software. I was writing that kind of software to implement remote terminals over a 1200baud modem link, with simple RLL compression on the data for good measure, in the 1980s, on 4MHz Z80s :O

[Evo]

Not even a comparison such as 400 gigs of bandwidth is equivalent to a company of X size/ brand recognition and would be operated by Y number of employees.


I can't give you corporate website figures, so this isn't quite what you're looking for. However, I can give you a very rough eqivalent - where I work we're using a little under 100 Gb per working day, roughly 2Tb per month. Scaling this, PPRuNe would be like an IT research company with around 200 employees. The bandwith/employee is higher than average and the pattern of bandwidth usage is all different, but it's a ballpark figure.

[drauk]

I am not completely independent, because I am in discussions with Rob about helping out with the hosting, but anyway...

A £2K server might have the "headline" spec, but one with large processor caches, SCSI disks, a hardware raid controller, dual power suppliers, dual network cards etc would likely cost double that.

Co-location is much cheaper than having someone else manage the server, but at many places you get some rack space, power and an Internet connection. As well as configuring the hardware, the operating system, the database and the application you have to deal with firewalling, backups, possibly DoS attacks etc. So "raw" co-location isn't for the faint hearted. Then you might want to consider having a standby machine available, not to mention some spare parts. None of this matters much if you don't care if your server is down for a few days if something goes wrong. Cabinet space (with generator and battery backed power, plus air-conditioning) is fairly cheap these days and a couple of servers, a network switch, a firewall, some kind of backup device and a spare server isn't going to cost much. A 1/4 cabinet is fine if physical security isn't a big concern - perhaps a couple of hundred pounds a month.

Bandwidth in small quantities (a single T1 is small in these terms) at a top-flight (no pun intended) UK co-location facility could cost anything between 150 and 500 per Mbs per month. Resellers would likely charge at the upper end of this scale.

Add the cost of the expertise to keep all this stuff up and running, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (i.e. at least two people who know what they're doing) with realtime monitoring, regular backups, etc.

We charge about £2-3,000 per month for hosting this type of application. We have commercial clients that do just that. How many clients do we have that are companies that run free services? None.

[Gertrude the Wombat]

Not even a comparison such as 400 gigs of bandwidth is equivalent to a company of X size/ brand recognition and would be operated by Y number of employees. Well, thats around 500 times larger than the Cambridge Accommodation Notice Board (http://www.brettward.co.uk/canb/), which takes me a few minutes per day to maintain (just the site, that is, the ISP maintains the server) and gets around 2,500 visits per week. So that would put PPRuNe at maybe 125 hours per day, split across all the moderators, and 1,250,000 visits per week. I suspect somehow that these numbers don't really scale like this.

[Edited to correct arithmetic.]

[Danny]

:{ ...and don't forget that all this started as a joke when Demon Internet gave me 5Mb of free webspace to play with all those years ago.:{

Just noticed this thread and have to explain that PPRuNe has had to become a business because of tax purposes. It's all a bit Catch 22'ish. As demand grew so did the need for server capacity. As we grew, advertisers started offering dosh to reach our audience and we needed the dosh to fund the growth.

Whilst PPRuNe is run as a business, all that means is that I pay someone to 'manage' the daily stuff of dealing with the bank, the the accountant and the taxman. I also employ someone to manage the advertising administration and that's about it. Oh, and the lawyer too. :* As I'm cr@p at business and have very little inclination to do an office job, I spend my spare time monitoring the content of PPRuNe and making any strategic decisions as required. The rest of the time I sleep and work the main job which is in the pointy bit of a B737.

As for a server and all the other suggestions, well, it's really a case of getting the best value for the money. You can try and explain untill you are blue in the face but I just want a fast, multi processor server with a fast, optimised sql database and a nifty front end for the users. If anyone can offer top end, high speed server with the necessary bandwidth availability at a price that is affordable then I'm ready to talk.

Actually, it's closer to 500Gb a month bandwidth now! :ooh:

Demographically, I can access stats based on people who have signed up to the PPRuNe Pilot Email which is run by third party Everyone.net. There are just over 19,000 people registered for that service now. I then transpose those figures to the membership here to get a rough idea. Needless to say, I think it is quite good but I'm prepared to defer to someone with real knowledge of what it all means. Here are the stats for the PPRuNe Pilot Email from just over a year ago:

Break Down By Industry:
banking/finance/real estate: 750
business supplies or services: 1667
computer-related hardware: 210
computer-related internet: 242
computer-related is, mis, dp: 282
computer-related software: 339
consumer retail/wholesale: 387
education, research: 1300
engineering/construction: 1730
entertainment/media/publishing:494
government: 2421
hospitality- travel/accommodations: 5788
legal services: 364
manufacturing/distribution: 828
medical/health services: 545
nonprofit/membership organizations: 409
other: 1
Total 17757


Break Down By Occupation:

academic/educator: 451
clerical/administrative: 264
college/graduate student: 1157
computer technical/engineering: 682
executive/managerial: 2649
homemaker: 105
k-12 student: 233
other technical/engineering: 1690
professional- doctor, lawyer, etc.: 6718
retired: 824
sales/marketing: 393
self-employed/own company: 756
service/customer support: 829
tradesman/craftsman: 369
unemployed, looking for work: 637
Total 17757


Break Down By Income:

no income: 1347
under 20,000 usd: 1246
20,000 - 34,999 usd: 1593
35,000 - 49,999 usd: 1716
50,000 - 74,999 usd: 2085
75,000 - 99,999 usd: 1484
100,000 - 149,999 usd: 1280
over 150,000 usd: 1137
unspecified: 5868
null: 1
Total 17757


Break Down By Gender:

female: 1682
male: 16075
Total 17757


Break Down By Age:

13 and under: 5
14 - 16: 155
17 - 18: 203
19 - 21: 549
22 - 25: 1656
26 - 35: 5535
36 - 45: 4587
46 - 55: 3085
56 - 65: 1374
66 - 75: 339
76 - 85: 94
86 and over: 153
Total 17735

Go figure! :confused: :zzz:

[Flyin'Dutch']

Hi Danny,

Assuming that all the unspecified ones are too rich to admit their earnings, one can deduct that less than 10% earns $20k or below.

Would have thought therefore that raising some cash for an upgrade should be within reach.

I know absolutely nuffink about computers and the options for upgrades/costs but do know that I have not signed up and paid for a personal title because the 'donation' wooliness is not something I feel comfortable with.

A clear: 'If you want service X you have to pay Y' would make it a lot easier to make a judgement call about perceived value.

Suspect I am not the only one.

Like PPRuNe, would like it better if it was quicker!

FD

PS: Can you tell me why I do not get the option to do a poll when I post a new topic?

[PPRuNe Towers]

Thanks for the feedback on the thread folks - a real pleasure to see so much positive effort being put into a quite justifiable gripe thread.

I'm just back in from an overnight middle eastern trip but I had managed to discuss some of your thoughts with Danny before leaving. Our respective posting times consistently show how we squeeze time into the site - yawn.

The IT folks have given us a lot to think about - a completely different strategy if you like for providing the site for you. The server has been a regular crisis ever since we started and we just kept stepping up through shared servers until we ended up with our own. There have also been times when we've popped ads on a seperate server to offload the main one. It's been a constant diet of growing pains.

At last you at least have some idea of the scale and costs we face - not to ask you for money but explain the periods of poor service while we raise the funds for each upgrade. We aren't corporate but I think the professionals have managed to indicate we really are facing the costs and decisions that a significant company faces. And as drauk points out so succinctly he doesn't know anyone working on this scale providing a free service.

And finally sleep beckons, well fleetingly now that Danny has let me find out the hard way we're nudging the 500 gigabytes of bandwidth per month mark :uhoh: :uhoh: :uhoh:

Regards to all,
Rob Lloyd

PS Polling is switched off over most of the site at the moment Flyin'Dutch'. We consider it to be mainly eye candy and we play around with these things to see whats adds to load on the server and what's insignificant. There are hundreds of these bells, whistles and add ons that prettify a site with few (in our terms) visitors. A gruesome thread with huge numbers of requests to BRL and threats of violence might get it switched on for a trial period on this forum:} :} :}

[Timothy]

Danny,

I think that you are getting the message from the professionals here that co-hosting is the answer.

I completely understand your reticence about getting involved, it seemed to me to be a big step when first proposed by our Technical Director a while back, and if you don't know your way around the subject and spend most of your time pointing a 737 in the right direction I can see the temptation simply to build on what you've got.

BUT we've never looked back from the decision to co-host. It literally reduced our costs, cos we had been paying a fortune for a T1 trunk, and the co-hosting actually cost £4k a year less and we never have to worry about the line going down, because we are on the UUNet/3Com trunk...the biggest in the world.

As your own stats show, you have a wealth of IT pros on the site. I cannot believe that at least some of them wouldn't give you free advice and even physical help to get this going in a co-hosted site.

I would bite the bullet (but do not, I repeat not take it with you through security :ouch: ) and start the process to investigate the co-hosting option.

...or ignore me...that's cool too..it's up to you mate...:ok:

Will

[Circuit Basher]

Danny and the PPRuNettes - I don't call myself an IT professional (I manage projects which are embedded systems running on a much smaller scale and take care of the housekeeping on the office Win2k / Exchange server) but have a reasonable appreciation of the subject.

One thought that always struck me as possibly offering a way of reducing the server / DB / bandwidth loading is to consider modifying the way of browsing the forums. I currently tend to go on to a forum and look at threads that have been updated since my last visit. If I read to the last post in a thread and then wish to go to the next updated thread, I tend to select the right yellow arrow at the bottom (or top) of the page. If this is a multi-page thread, then I have to select the last page of the thread (or find out which is the last post that I've already read), so this means that I have to view possibly 2 or more pages until I find the first new post on the thread. The alternative to this is to go to the forum summary page and then select the blue down arrow on that thread; again, this requires an additional page view before I can get to the post I want. Is it feasible for the right arrow to be modified to select the first updated post of the next thread chronologically (ie) to have the same function as the blue down arrow from the summary page? This way, when browsing through the threads, I would only require one page view to see the latest post. I'm finding it tricky to explain what I mean clearly without using graphics, but hope that you can fill in the gaps.

With any luck, if this were possible, it may reduce bandwidth / server requirements as a result of enabling more efficient browsing of the boards.

I trust that will be viewed as a constructive suggestion rather than just a whinge about an excellent free service!

[Man-on-the-fence]

Some interesting stats about the site here (http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?q=pprune&url=http://www.pprune.org/forums/)

Apparently we are ranked number 33,444 :ok:

Thanks for all the hard work, if someone can supply a PPRuNe badge I would be happy to buy one.

[S-Works]

I actually do this for a living. If Danny & Co want to PM I can talk them through the options (free of charge!).

There are better and cheaper ways of running the site that will give a major performance uplift.

I am however very greatful to have this site and live with this it's shortcoming's in return for the wealth of experiance it provides.

Long may it continue.

[PPRuNe Towers]

Thanks yet again for the comments from those in the industry.

I think all on the forum should have divined 2 or 3 things from the foregoing. We absolutely recognise the problems you're facing using the site, we are working on a radical overhaul and we have raised the funds now to actively improve things.

Additionally we are seriously looking at moving to this alternative way of hosting the site after all the advice we've received here, on the rotorheads forum and privately. As Danny's comments made clear we want to run PPRuNe for aviation people and we've been draggged kicking and screaming into doing it on a legal and commercial footing. We funded it with our after tax income from the day jobs for years but as you've now read we are simply too big for that due to demand. Bear in mind we've never advertised or issued a press release in the 8 years of running the site Therefore the word demand is both absolutely accurate and the curse we suffer:{ :{ :{

But now to the real reason for writing which has been triggered by the suggestions from Circuit Basher. What can we offer short term to alleviate the poor service?

I follow this forum very carefully simply because I'm a light aircraft man at heart. The Boeing supports my family, apart from me and the missus the oldest member of which is a Jodel:} I haven't seen the simplest suggestion of all which is to use a different internet browser. This can transform your viewing of the site, especially at peak times.

The majority of you use Internet Explorer and it doesn't support a feature called tabbed browsing. By switching to another, they're all free, you can have multiple pages loading while you're reading one thread. Finish what you are reading and select the next page you want. While that loads you click on the next tab and you've got a loaded page ready to read. Repeat across the site on different tabs until replete with your aviation fix.

This prescription for PPRuNE addicts is especially effective for those of you on dial up access or as we doctors refer to it. Lumbered by BTitis.

We work very hard to ensure that PPRuNe renders acceptably on any stable browser on all platforms - PC, Mac or unix. Therefore I'll bow out and ask our readers to suggest tabbed browsers for you to download or liberate from computer mag cover disks without any bias from us in the Towers. It really, really, really is worth it especially if you are on dial up.

Come on team - chip in with your recommendations for improving peoples' experience of the site while we crack on with world domination - err, getting the forums sorted:ok: :ok:

Regards again,
Rob Lloyd

:ok: :ok:

[FlyingForFun]

Hi Rob,

Interesting to read about "tabbed browsing" - I have to admit I hadn't come across that before.

But I achieve something very similar using Microsoft Internet Explorer: Instead of clicking on the link for a thread I want to read, I right-click on it, and choose "Open in new window". Then repeat for as many threads as necessary. Go away, have a cup of tea, and when you come back, all of the threads are loaded and ready for me to read! :ok: Hope someone else finds this technique useful. (But I would definitely second the calls for an alternative interface which is less, um, conspicuous at work! ;))

FFF
--------------

[PPRuNe Towers]

FFF - a tabbed browser does exactly what you're suggesting but without the mess!

Everything is in a single window with a line of captioned tabs across the top. Windows users will be used to seeing the same thing in the video display section of their control panel. Beautifully simple, intuitive and so, so easy to hide behind a convincing spreadsheet or other less career limiting workpiece:O :O

Again, without trying to introduce any bias from us, you'll find these browsers are smaller and far more fleet of foot than Internet Explorer - even on well run, technically competent sites:hmm: :hmm:

Rob

[vintage ATCO]

FFF wrote:

But I achieve something very similar using Microsoft Internet Explorer: Instead of clicking on the link for a thread I want to read, I right-click on it, and choose "Open in new window".

Left clicking whilst holding down Shift achieves the same result ;)

Will have a looked at tabbed browsing though.


VA

[Tinstaafl]

Opera. Offers tabbed, non-tabbed or a combination eg you can have an Opera window open with tabbed pages & have another Opera window on the go as well.

I usually use a single Opera window with ~30 tabs running. While one or more is/are loading I view one that has already completed. Once finished I send the current tab on to its next target & start reading a different tab. Works really well.

Standards compliant so any site that is written to W3C standards works. There are relatively few sites that require IE. They're usually poorly written with broken or strangeM$ specific code. Thank christ most work. It a real wrench for the worst to have to use IE.

Opera loads faster, is more secure, offers much greater control over cookies & pop-ups etc etc.

Areas to improve:

Access to cookie controls. It's a bit cumbersome & not very intuitive at first.

Bookmark/favorites (sic) management. Somewhat easier in IE.

[ratsarrse]

I can recommend the Avant Browser - it really changes the way you use things like Google and PPRuNe. It's also free (you can make a donation if you wish). Try http://www.avantbrowser.com/index.html

[RomeoTangoFoxtrotMike]

A big fan of Opera (www.opera.com (http://www.opera.com/) ), I'm currently stress testing Mozilla Firebird (www.mozilla.org/products/firebird/ (http://www.mozilla.org/products/firebird/) ) and am very pleased with it so far. Just another suggestion :ok:

[Evo]

I like Opera, but it does have some problems with javascript

[IO540]

Opera is nice but doesn't work with many websites e.g. most online banking / financials.

Despite what is said, many websites are being developed for IE6 only and, more to the point, are only ever tested with IE6. There are too many features in the HTML produced by today's tools (esp. that piece of very popular junk called Frontpage) which show up differently on different browsers.

Perhaps a real pro can develop the sort of fancy website which most marketing people want and make it browser independent but nowadays there are more website designers than there were tree surgeons after 1987 :O

For most non-geeks, IE6 is a necessity.

[Circuit Basher]

Rob / Rodents Bottom - many thanks for the suggestion of the Avant tabbed browser (I'd always thought of Avant / Mozilla / Opera as more Linux-orientated browser, I must confess).

I've installed Avant and am currently trialling it - we'll see how I get on!

[BRL]

Hi Mike. I thought about moving it when it first appeared here. Reason I took the decision not to was there are a lot of IT bods who frequent this forum. Not all people who visit here go to other forums on the site, I imagine IT bods do go to the computer forum but other people who may be able to help don't. Also some regulars from here have contributed and may be interested but don't go to the other forum.
Seems like I got this decision right for once as both Danny and Rob have posted here and not moved/merged it themselves or sent me horses heads in the post for not doing my job properly.!!!!!!!!!!!
Rob also provided a link in the one on the computer forum yesterday I believe and the problem is allmost sorted out now.

For those regulars in the computer forum you know I got Opera a few months ago and have been usuing it since. Cannot reccommend it enough. Multi-tabbing is brilliant when on pprune, I can stick to reading all the new posts in here and have a look around the rest of the site at the same time. It really does help cut down on time. It is free but you can donate if you want. Go and have a look, its not bad at all.
Brl.

P.S. Personal title anyone.. ;)

[Circuit Basher]

L - Just got my PayPal account activated and ordered my personal title, so should soon have made my contribution to Danny's new server!

[drauk]

For anybody that doesn't like Opera, try Mozilla Firebird - it does tabbed browsing and is pretty fast and light.

Mac users have even more choice. As well as Opera and Firebird, Safari 1.1 (included with OS X 10.3) does tabbed browsing very elegantly, is fast and highly standards-compliant.

The only problem with all this talk of tabbed browsing is that it isn't good for the server to have to supply you with several pages at once. I doubt enough people are using this facility to make it a problem. Watch out for some plug-ins though; they allow you to download every link on a page into individual tabs with a single click. Several people using these at once would be bad news for everyone.

[airship]

My 2 cents worth:

If a lot of PPRuNers are indeed using "tab-capable" or other similarly automated browsers, then wouldn't that be intensifying the problems?

I'm not an IT pro, but if I understand the principle correctly, these auto-browsers would automatically download "adjacent" pages or links, which may in fact never be viewed. If 1 PPRuNer's auto-browser is downloading upto 30 pages at a time including the 1 currently being viewed, then surely that is the equivalent of having another 29 "virtual" users online. All of whom are consuming processor capacity and bandwidth.

I have an ADSL connection and to my knowledge, no ISPs charge on the basis of data volume, except for certain services requiring dedicated satellite resources such as Inmarsat. Conversely, a significant proportion of the costs of hosting a commercial website are based on the volume of data.

Perhaps there is a way to limit the number of concurrent connections from a single PPRuNer/IP address so as to limit abuse?

Also, the vBulletin / MySQL software used is very competitively priced...and whilst offering a plethora in the way of wonderful features, the question has to be posed. Would spending more on the software be more economical in terms of computing resources and bandwidth?

[spekesoftly]

Similar thoughts had crossed my mind. Do alternative browsers to IE, that speed up user access, also reduce PPRuNe server load, or could they in fact cause an increase?

[PPRuNe Towers]

airship/spekesoftly

As has been made clear the present server is a stiff and it will be replaced shortly. Our history is replete with these ocassions where performance is very poor due to demand.

To put it in perspective we started when 3% of homes in Europe were on line. Try to imagine a time when there was no Google, no Amazon, no such thing as the Dot com boom let alone the crash:confused: Yahoo was a noise and Windows 95 was still late arriving.

Avoiding the middle of the European day has been standard advice throughout the years - a palliative. Using a tabbed browser is our long term policy advice for all of you, all of the time whatever the state of the server. It gives you the best chance of reading the site at a pace that suits you.

If you sniff around you'll find independent stats on us which show PPRuNers read far more pages than the vast majority of sites - 12 or 13 at one sitting. We're setting up a new sytem what will again cope with that. With a decent proportion of users switching to a tabbed browser the time accessing and placing demand on the server to get your fix should drop. That's the mythical average user of course.

In our experience people dont even open a fifth of the number of tabs suggested earlier in the thread. Most folks find the interface gets too crowded if they're run more than five or six tabs at once.

One final tip for those considering a switch to a tabbed browser. Firebird has been mentioned so if you are so wedded to Internet Explorer that change seems daunting there is help at hand.

Firebird is like Linux, open source code - anyone can write for it. If you go to the preferences section after loading it you'll find a section on 'themes.' A click there will take you to the Firebird site where you can select and load a completely new look to the browser. One of them will mimic exactly what your used to seeing with your present browser.

Regards to all,
Rob Lloyd

[DistantRumble]

I do this stuff for a living

Web and SQL database tuning

I find it's strange that it's the CPU that's burned .. I would have expected bandwidth the limiting factor

Anyway strange to find the thread here - never come in this door usually

back soon - write if you need a few bits of help

[IO540]

Sorry to dig out this old thread but I found this site

http://www.toyotaimportsforum.co.uk/forum

which looks like it uses what must have been the same off the shelf www forum software package as pprune. The difference is that it is about 5 times quicker to use. The backspace key also works instantly on it, just as it should.

[BRL]

Hi there, thanks for the link. I don't really know what you are trying to say here :O Is it a suggestion to move/upgrade the software they use or something like that or is it showing us 'How it should be done' kind of thing..?

To put it in perspective again, if you look at their members, it lists just over 1200. We have almost 70.000 and rising every day.

Have a look AT THIS (http://www.pprune.org/advert.php) and think how many people we have to accomodate and it all takes up bandwidth. There is a server move very, very soon to help with the demand, but it has come at a cost, advertsing revenue is just not enough to cover it all and so Danny and Rob have to dig into their own pockets again. This is where you can help, simply buy a personal title. Many thanks to all who have done so recently, much appreciated. :ok:
Brl.

[IO540]

All I was trying to say is that their page appears to contain a LOT less HTML, for very nearly the same functionality. Each pprune page is around 200 kilobytes of data, most of which is not necessary.

It would not suprise me if having a careful look at how each pprune page is generated halved this, and that's worth a lot of server power and ISP bandwidth.

To be fair, most websites today use a huge amount of data, for what is actually displayed. When "the firm" is paying, one just throws a big server and lots of BW at it.

[BRL]

Ok, things are a lot clearer now, thanks.
Brl. :)

[drauk]

IO540, not sure how you are measuring the size of the page, but the HTML on a typical PPRuNe page is about 60-80K. Before I posted on it, the last page of this thread is 57K. That is pretty similar to the Toyota site. So whilst I agree that the HTML behind a PPRuNe page could be tightened up, I don't think it is HTML byte count that is making the other site faster.

It probably isn't the low volume of users either, at least not right now (2:30am), though that would make a big difference when PPRuNe gets busy during the day. My guess is that the connectivity of their server is better than the current PPRuNe one, but we can't know for sure.

Unless the previous page was the result of a form submission then the backspace key in my browser works (to take you back a page) instantly on PPRuNe too.

[PPRuNe Towers]

Backspace for instant flyback works fine in Internet Explorer and Safari but not Firebird by Mozilla. Then again, I'm not up to date on their latest build number.

Nevertheless - worthwhile point raised as the backspace is such a useful 'gesture' to speed up most peoples' ppruning.

Migration to the new server begins on the 10th March when we get our e-mail sorted out. We will be taking it easy to ensure the best performance possible from the outset. Therefore migration of the entire site will take a while but should pay dividends for the future.

Regards
Rob Lloyd

[Timothy]

Rob,

I still hold, quite strongly, the view that the requirement to log on every 24 hours is unnecessarily annoying to us regular users, and a sledgehammer to crack a nut with respect to the reasons given for imposing it.

Unless there is a hidden agenda/reason (and if there is, eMail me and I will shut up), pleeaase can we find a different way to reduce the forgotten password problem?

How about a rota of volunteers to handle password problems? I would volunteer on a "one in four" basis.

Timothy

[PPRuNe Towers]

Timothy,

Only 3 of us have the keys to under the old girl's stays and I'm the only one there everyday so I'm afraid the rota idea is a non starter.

Won't make sense to the majority on this forum but to those PPruNe was created for it's vital. The pro aviators and ATCer's all have contractual and Ops manual sections forbidding public discussion of their professional life. I know you've done this aviation lark for a living but the PPL's must understand how important anonymity is for the health of the site.

As to the log on it stays because of the time saving it provides for me - mail is down by a half.

Regards
Rob

[Timothy]

Rob,

I think you misread me. I said nothing about anonymity. I totally understand (having been pro until recently) why it is necessary.

I was only talking about the login issue, and was offering to help with that very eMail load.

Timothy

[PPRuNe Towers]

Password, username and registered e-mail address are irrevocably linked - no outside help I'm afraid much as I'd love it.

I think you ought to buy a Mac - Applescript will log on for you in a trice on as many browsers as you'd like:} :}

Regards
Rob

PS Looks like we are still on track for the migration to the new server 13th and 14th of March. There may be some outage time but I promise there are a group of people who will be working very hard to minimise it.

[digidave]

Rob,
I think I type for many when I type "Thanks for all the effort you guys are putting into the upgrade". Great to have 24/7 search back:8

There will without doubt be complaints, there always are!

Cheers for a great place to hang out :ok: :ok:
dd

[WelshFlyer]

For me to host this website i would budget it around £3400 per year for first year, this includes the price of the dedicated server.

I'd say £2500 a year.

Let's not forget that the "users online" is a 5 minute average synoptic of useage. That is to say; there might only be 5 requests at any one time going to the host machine.

The main issue would probably be uplink speed; above 1Mbp/s at least. (Iv'e known pentium 200Mhz systems do really well on a T3 uplink, as servers) The other issue is physical memory.

All very complex stuff.....but this is what you get when you work with computers:)


Wf.

[drauk]

et's not forget that the "users online" is a 5 minute average synoptic of useage.

On PPRuNe it is actually 15 minutes.

How many requests are being processed at one time is also a function of the length of time it takes to process a request, which is why once things start getting bad on a web server they get really bad. That is why vBulletin (the software pprune uses) turns users away when the CPU load is above a certain figure.

An old Pentium system can indeed flood a T1 line, but not if it is doing tens of database queries to service each request.

[Vedeneyev]

Is it me or is teh site much much quicker than usual today? Did those new servers arrive?