I and some others have posted about the problems that began with the recent website ‘DownGrade’. Slowness between pages is the worst of any websites that I visit. Although I do have dialup, the difference between the MR website - including these forums - is vastly different that other websites, indicating the problem is with MR’s programmers. This is not a difficult science or art, and I for one would like to see the problem addressed seriously., rather than just continuing to stonewall users of the forum.
I have been watching this website’s performance for about a week now and it is pretty consistent. In the morning, it just motors right along. The same performance in the afternoon. At night, like after the diner hour, it starts getting slower and slower. I am on a 10 Mb cable line and my connection to my ISP is very consistent. I have traced the internet hops to MR’s host and things are pretty consistent there also. Therefore, the problem seems to lie with loading on the host systems. I would guess that the servers don’t handle the peak workload all that well. If the webmaster is aware of this, I would guess that MR will have to pony up for more CPU power in the evening. I don’t know how things are configured at the host end, but unless MR is hosting this site on their own systems, the host provider should be able to add CPU cycles to match the workload. Of course, this costs the customer more money, but the technology should allow a rather quick fix.
I do notice an awful lot of advertisement downloads with each page and these take cycles and time since they are from several different ad servers. I also see Facebook in these downloads and have no idea what that is about. I run Ad Block Plus on my browser and this helps somewhat. Still, the slowness is at MR’s end. I hope this clearifies some of the issues folks are seeing. If you really must let someone know about it, notify the webmaster as noted above.
I’m having the same problems. It took me nearly 8 minutes to get this thread to come up and just over 10 minutes to get to this reply box, and I’m on CABLE! I don’t know how long it will take to post this reply. It may crash before that’s done. I tried posting earlier in another thread and after more than 10 minutes of seeing a blue line at the bottom of my screen with no progress I gave up on it. This is ridiculous.
Like Jim, I run AdBlock Plus and this seems to help somewhat. It’s too bad that forum users have to resort to this, because it’s the ads that pay for the forum. If the advertisers realize that their ads are being filtered out, they may just stop their advertising, and it’s us, the users, that lose out.
Just a quick question, but has anyone else used another (non-Kalmbach) forum that runs this ‘Community Server’ software? It could be something inherent in the way the forum software is coded.
I am sure that the Kalmbach folks are quite aware of the issue by now and that they are working on it.
Lucky me, as I am 6 hours ahead of EST, I am not having this issue during the day, only late in the evening or night. I had to give up on quite a few posts, as I was running into time-outs.
Just to clearify my use of Ad Block Plus. I don’t run it to block ads per se, but to block ads that may contain hijack code that can download viruses or really bad malware. There have been several ad suppliers that have been identified as serving up ads that contain hijack code. The most noticeable thing is your browser gets real slow and starts sucking up CPU cycles on your machine. Call me paranoid, if you will, but I have seen too many people victimized by browser hijacking. I know the ads help the forum provider pay for the service, but I feel the need to protect my assets is stronger.
I too have had some difficulties with the website but mine were related to log-in issues not speed. However, I had a very pleasant experience corresponding with the technical department at Kalmbach. They were quick to respond ,and not with just a canned message, but with a real person.
I need to make an amendment to my previous posting as I too am having serious speed issues on this forum. My internet connection is supplied by Qwest in Red Lodge, MT and this is the first time I’ve had this problem. But things are very very slow right now…but only on this website. Other websites seem to be working in a normal fashion.
Strange, but I’m not having any problems with speed. It just zips right along. Haven’t had any speed problems for a few days now. I’ve got a high speed cable connection. One thing I have noticed is that in the evening, everything slows down. There is one site I visit that shows the download speed and in the evening it’s less than half what it is in the early morning. I have been told that this is a down side of cable. Apparently you share the connection back to the server with your neighbours and if a lot of them are on line the connection slows down processing many more data streams. Sounds reasonable given the times of day when it’s fast and when it’s slower.
yep, that’s how cable works. The provider makes a loop for a particular division of their service area (IIRC, this is generally a few city blocks, maybe 4-5). This loop may have a capacity of say 512 mb/sec, so when you’re the only guy on, your 10 mb/sec link is the limiting factor. Now when people start coming home, and 59 more people hop on the loop is over capacity (600 Mb/sec trying to go thru a pipe that can handle 512). everyone gets limited to 8.5 meg/sec.
note that this doesn’t even begin to take into effect Kalmbach’s upload speed (how fast they can push the data to us). Let’s just say they have a capacity of 5 mb/s (5,000 kb/s). I routinely see 50+ people on… so we can assume that a 100k/sec connection is perfectly fine for the forums themselves. the tipping point is say 65 people doing something (approx 75k/sec). anything more than 65 and the forums themselves start to choke (again, just on bandwidth – I’m not factoring in the thrashing of the servers that run the forums). Let’s say 1/3 of that need is ads – so we can make do with a solid 50kb/s connection to get the forums running as seamlessly as possible.
Unfortunately on a 56k dialup modem, your nominal speed is about 33.6k (maybe 45k if you’ve got new/good wiring). as with any connection, there’s some overhead to keep things routed properly; hence the less than advertised speed – same thing happens with cable, but since your residential connection is significantly LESS than the throughput of the loop; you can generally get burst speeds well above what you’re paying for. So, in essence; a dialup connection will never get these forums (ads blocked or not) to run at their “nominal” speed. Killing the ads (adblock or similar) will help things along, but it won’t necessarily be a cure-all.
***NOTE that i’ve provided numbers only for the sake of discussion. They do not reflect real-world situations, and should not be considered for anythin