PPRuNe Servers vs Exceptionaly High Number of Visitors
 

Whilst this may be a sore point for many of you who actually manage to read this, due to the BA B777 accident at LHR yesterday and the intense interest it has generated worldwide, the number of people attempting to log into PPRuNe has more than doubled. This has led to some problems with the servers being able to handle the loads.

PPRuNe is scheduled to transfer to new, more powerful servers in three weeks. Whilst this should resolve the problems, it does not help in the short term. We are making every effort to control how many people are able to log on to PPRuNe at any one time.

Our normal level of visitors runs at around 2,500 at any one time. This increased to over 7,000 yesterday and caused a partial meltdown of our servers. It has been running at around 3,500 overnight and has once again increased to over 5,000 this morning.

This causes the server to run quite slowly, for obvious reasons. To try and alleviate this problem, a system has been installed that gives priority to visitors who have registered and are logged in. I will be tweaking these facilities throughout the day but we are currently restricted by overwhelming numbers of visitors.

If you are a guest and manage to read this, then congratulations. You are one of only a few to be able to do so. Please bear with us whilst we try to keep everything running, albeit more slowly than usual. If you are a registered member and are logged in and have had the "server busy" message more times than you would like, then I apologise for the substandard experience you are having of PPRuNe at this time.

As a forum administrator myself, I understand the problems.

Good work getting it working for registered members!

Many Thanks,

Josh

Thanks for all the help, it only means that pprune is getting bigger by the day!

Cheers!:ok:

Good to hear it, Danny. There is a fair bit of whingeing going on about it on the computers forum. The current Heathrow problem has obviously exacerbated PPRuNe's growing pains which we have been seeing again recently and seem to occurr every two years or so as it just grows and grows. Please keep up the marvellous work.

P.P.

And now with the AirDisaster.com forum sailing off into the sunset, I would suspect even more traffic.

Thanks for it all though Danny.

Don't worry... we can survive a few seconds without PPRUNE:}

Thanks!

part of the problem???????
 

Post #336 in the BA B777 thread offers this:

"It's worth noting that I found my way here because the Wikipedia page for BA38 now includes a link to this discussion forum - this is, no doubt, the reason for the heavy traffic that's causing server overload. Somebody might want to edit the article to remove that link, but I'll leave that up to PPRuNe regulars to decide."

Sorry, can't find how to edit the references on Wikipedia or I'd fix it.

I've not been able to get on to the 777 thread at all! I've taken several attempts to post on this thread! :hmm:

While I fully understand the increase in traffic due to the BA incident and the demands this puts on the server, let's not overlook that server problems were clearly evident prior to the BA incident.

Lots of effort goes into keeping a website (especially a popular one) up and running smoothly. A tip of the hat to the folks that have kept PPRUNE running smoothly.

C2j

Pyschic PPRUNE
 

The server problems started way before the incident at heathrow.. but I am sure that made it worse! There was a whole thread devoted to the server problems well before the 777 hit the grass

Danny ... ditto the above 2 posts. "Problem" became evident in recent weeks, had been posted about, and errr ignored :ugh:

Meant that, unlike previous incidents, BB was "pretty useless" in a situation it could really have shone :{

I trust your starting this thread is not as an "excuse" but an acknowledgement "it will be learnt from and addressed" :eek:

NoD

On the upside, every time I see the "Server too busy" screen I also get a fresh reload of the ads. That's got to mean another $.0000001 in somebody's pocket at PPRuNe!

Dave :ok:

Another part of the problem
 

The Register is also not helping with an article "Heathrow 777 crash flattens servers" at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01...ers_flattened/


Next thing you know, we'll be knee-deep in IT geeks :}
(like me)

Good idea. You should keep that as a standard in the future.

Brgds,
IFTB

Thanks for the comments. However, I'm not sure which bit of "PPRuNe is scheduled to transfer to new, more powerful servers in three weeks." you didn't quite understand. As for the tidal wave of visitors the BA crash generated, I doubt anyone would have predicted the numbers being so high.

As I mentioned in the first post, the server is already scheduled. These things do not happen overnight and have to be planned carefully. No doubt there will be a lot of gnashing of teeth when the swap over takes place as it will involve a certain amount of down time. C'est la guerre!

To give you a slight idea of the numbers involved, we normally have around 35,000 to 40,000 unique visitors a day. That's around 60,000 visits in total a day increasing to an expected 160,000 today. That number has more than doubled the last two days. That's over a 100% increase and that's with the throttling we are having to apply to keep the servers from melting!

Finally, PPRuNe advertising is not charged on a per view basis and all our clients pay a monthly fee. Value for money? You bet! Now that you've unleashed the marketing guy from within, I will direct any potential new advertisers who would like a daily audience of the numbers above to visit our advertising pages at: http://www.pprune.org/forums/advertise.php and for an index of our current advertisers, please visit: http://www.pprune.org/forums/advertiserindex.php

There! That feels better. ;)

I don't know how where you get your patience from.

IFTB :cool:

Danny,


thanks for the update. I think most of us understand the interest and the additional hits that the server has taken.
You have founded a great forum, and its its great even when its on its knees...:)

Danny,
Bet you never thought that you'd have to deal with problems like this when you started the website eh!! :)
Cheers and thanks for providing a very interesting forum

Saving bandwidth.


If all major works could be written off line and pasted in, it would cut the time on site down tremendously.