The speed of the website seems to be deteriorating rapidly. I'm on Broadband and regularily have to wait 20 seconds for a page to load up. No other sites I visit are affected, is pprune becoming a victim of it's own success? Looking at the Alexa siteCan anything be done about this, or will it take vast amounts of cash. (Hmm I suppose I'd better buy a pprune title)

There have also been a lot more "Server too busy.." messages over the last couple of days. I suspect a step function (ie a failure of something in the chain) rather than the gradual deterioration you would expect from increasing demand.

Maybe I will give Danny some money now.

Will

Danny and the Towers are fully aware of the shortcomings on the site at the moment, and are working actively to resolve getting the best deal and the best server.

As you will appreciate it involves a lot of cash AND a lot of careful thought.

He asks that you are patient, I know I know, it ain't easy, but he is full tilt on the problem as we speak.

Shouldn't be too long now.

Getting those server busy messages is a pain we can all do without. but it will be

Gosh- I was just about to post a query regarding the slowness of my broadband connection on the web(I've just contacted Pipex), when I picked up this thread. I'm on Pprune most of the time, and thought that it was my connection.

Having said that, Pipex replied -quote- " Anything over 300kbps for a 512 service is fine or around this mark." Surely, this is pretty pathetic, if your paying for 512kbs and are getting just over half that?


(Oops-Edited for typo)

Contention ratios and all that, Tosh, thats what they will throw at you.

Thanks for keeping us informed, PPRuNe Pop. It is frustrating, however as a PPRuNe addict, it just means trying to acquire some patience - which I find so hard in anything, but especially when I'm making my way through the PPRuNe site.

If we all took a five-word personal message, at £25, it can only help. Let's face it, we all take a lot out of PPRuNe, let's put a relatively small amount in, if only to say "Thank you" to Danny for all his efforts and investment.

It's only 10 pints of beer each

Without wanting to pick on Tosh (sorry mate, your head just happened to be above that parapet ) He says that he has broadband (~£25 per month) and uses it primarily for PPRuNe, but no evidence of a contribution. (Sorry Tosh, sorry Tosh, sorry Tosh, the same could be said of thousands of other ppruners...you just were in the wrong place at the wrong time )

Will

Just completing contractual details for a new server. Danny and I were peering into a terminal window the other night and watching the load. Each processor appears there live and the idle times were in the 2-3% area at best. Server load was at ten which is the max. We want one with a knob that goes up to eleven

New server will go from twin 1gig cpus to a pair of 2.5ghz. Memory should be fine at the present 1gig and the disks will be a faster spinning scsi raid array. Backbone remains the present dedicated T1 line as it's processor cycles we need desperately.

Tactically we're looking for a window to shut down and set up the new system at a time when our ace techie Mik can apply concerted TLC - his employers bafflingly insist on him working rather hard for them rather than PPRuNe.

It's crap service and we openly acknowledge that but we're having to raise a substantial sum of money for both the kit and the labour for third parties to get it running the other side of the Atlantic so Mik can work his unix command line magic. It is happening and we really do look forward to radically improving the site in the near future.

Regards
Rob

I am suprised that CPU should be the bottleneck for 700,000 views a day on twin 1GHz processors, even with the reasonably high amount of DB access required. Are you quite sure your making the most of your existing infrastructure? Also, it is a shame that the site should be hosted in the US when such a majority of the users are outside the US. I'm not inclined to buy a personal title, but if you want some (free) advice or maybe even a SUN server (free in return for some advertising) you are welcome to get in touch.

Spending an inordinate amount of time here peering into the terminal window for live load figures as well as the prettier graphical tools. Another poor day.

There is a variable effect in action which isn't a function of straightforward viewing figures and it spans tens of hours or even days.

We went through something akin to this about 5 years ago with the site turning to glue a few times a day. It turned out that the IT bods at the major airframer that doesn't begin with B had noted all the calls out to us and to improve the service to their punters were sucking the whole thing into their server caches It had us baffled for months.

Danny believes that somewhere in the bb code for the board there is something ugly lurking - for example the search function - that is triggering a far more complex series of sql demands on the processor and database than there needs to be.

I've stood next to him and watched the same load and CPU read outs - with 600 on the board idle readings are negligable - 2 or 3% at most. Where I differ is that I have an utterly unqualified but strong gut feeling that somewhere within the server farm or in a router very close there is a choke point that has been around for a long time and isn't consistent.

As to the server farm it is simple economics regarding location. We get rounds of quotes in the UK each year. Put simply anyone needing our level of server, 24/7 tech support, rigorous back up regime as well as raid plus up to 400gigs of bandwidth per month is corporate, pure corporate and the pricing levels reflect this. However, we ain't corporate. No office, no staff but created and run entirely from our homes, hotel rooms and internet cafes.

We'd love a UK based server. Life would become far simpler for us both day to day and for upgrades/maintenance etc.

We really appreciate the offer of help, I'll be pointing out this thread to Danny so we can have a chat.

Regards from the Towers
Rob Lloyd

We run hosted ASP servers and I have guys on staff whose job it is to know about these things, so if it is helpful for you to crystalise anything as a question (or set of questions) that I can put to these guys please don't hesitate.

Will

Can't say I have any complaints when accessing from this location. Page loading runs from 3 to 10 secs usually. Get server too busy rarely - once a day on average. Using dial-up running 46.6 to 52 Kbps. When I'm there, the Internet cafe in Oxford running broadband is 2-3 seconds page loading on average.

rollingthunder

I think that it must be a matter of when you use it. At this time of night when it's just you and me there's no problem, but between 1300 and 1400 on a weekday you can often get "server too busy" four times out of five. Certainly happened lunchtime today(/yesterday)

Will

WCollins, £2.50 a pint (must be a suvverner).

Get Drapes to pay for a new server...he uses it most.

The very cheapest (and nastiest drink and ambience) round here (Epsom) is about £1.80, average £2.00 - £2.50, you can pay £3.00 in the designer pubs.

But then I don't drink or smoke....I can think of much better ways to spend my money!

Will

There is a parallel debate here.

PPRuNe Server

If any IT experts can assist Rob with his queries, I'm sure your input would be very welcome.

Recently bought a new server for my business - cost £9000. Lots of sympathy for Danny - he can't win, trying to provide a service whilst still holding down a full time job. Yes, I occasionally get the 'server busy' message, but, hey, life's a bitch sometimes. Keep at it Danny, we're all behind you, and thanks for the service...