Alcazar Posted September 23, 2005 Share Posted September 23, 2005 .............................does the speed on this site vary so much?I've got 1Mb broadband, but the download times vary page by page, from near instantaneous, to about 30 seconds, and seem to take no notice of time of day, number of responses etc etc. Anyone know?Alcazar Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Will Posted September 23, 2005 Share Posted September 23, 2005 From something Tim Stephenson of Archant IS said to us recently, there seems to be insufficient memory in the webservers - they currently have 2Gb which under normal circumstances should be enough, but are being doubled to 4Gb in each server. The low memory apparently causes periodic errors and occasional pauses if one of the servers needs to restart various processes to free memory. There are also plans, or so we are told, to increase the number of servers to deal with the number of concurrent users, which is sometimes too high for the present number of servers (they have to handle several other sites and forums as well as this one).Not sure if that answers the question entirely, but hope it helps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alcazar Posted September 23, 2005 Author Share Posted September 23, 2005 Makes sense, thanks for the reply Will, nice to know THEY know and are trying to do something.BTW: did you notice your post count at 1,066?Alcazar Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Will Posted September 24, 2005 Share Posted September 24, 2005 Glad we could help. Now that the improvements are getting under way there certainly seem to be fewer pauses, though (at least for us on dialup) the promised general speed increase seems slight.Pity that the post count has moved on - I wish there was some way I could freeze it at 1066. I had, quite by chance, a British mobile phone number that ended in 1066 that I have tried to get back, but to no avail as it lapsed during a period when we ceased to have a UK address for billing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Stephenson (Archant IS) Posted September 25, 2005 Share Posted September 25, 2005 To give a little more information, Living France's forums currently sit on a loadbalanced set of 3 webservers along with 150 other websites.We're in the process of looking at three sets of upgrades to this platform, with the common goal of improving performance for the end user.The first stage is in place, which is to trial content compression software. This should reduce the overall page size and reduce the time physically needed to download each page. The aim here is to improve page-load times. Initial results are looking promising but we'll continue to evaluate the benefits over the next month or so before reaching any conclusions. Ironically, dial-up users will probably see the most benefit from this!The second stage will be happening Monday morning, which is to upgrade the 3 servers from their current 2Gb to 4Gb of memory each. We're hoping this will solve some of the performance inconsistencies you're currently seeing throughout the day by giving the webserver software more headroom to handle the load.Finally, we're planning a larger set of upgrades - adding more webservers, upgrading their operating system, and improving resiliance to failure elsewhere in the server farm.I don't have a timescale for the final point at the moment as we're currently in the process of determining what sort of server configuration is going to give us the best performance vs cost (dual 3.6Ghz processor servers vs quad 3.6Ghz processor servers; and looking at 64-bit systems vs 32-bit.)Alongside all of this we're also nearing completion of work on a replacement forum system which should resolve problems with things like the search.Regards Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baz Posted September 25, 2005 Share Posted September 25, 2005 Tim, it is great to hear of the improvements as at times its has been a nightmare. It is a pleasure now to be able to go from one subject to another without the long wait whilst it is loaded, long may it continue.Baz Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Stephenson (Archant IS) Posted September 25, 2005 Share Posted September 25, 2005 Baz,Thanks for this - positive feedback makes a nice change.As I think we've probably mentioned before, although these forums have been performing badly over time we are committed to improving the situation. Unfortunately these things just take time, effort and money...Monday's round of upgrades should help make things more consistent too.Any comments are welcome!Regards, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Miki Posted September 25, 2005 Share Posted September 25, 2005 Got to admit that things are better at times , is that maybe because of demand or none demand?When will all us poor Firefox users get all the add ons like the Internet Explorer bods ?It is more the spell checker really, as I cannot be doing the option of writing it all in Word first. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Stephenson (Archant IS) Posted September 25, 2005 Share Posted September 25, 2005 Demand unfortunately doesn't come into it. We see around the same amount of traffic 7 days a week.Not sure about the spell checker - I'll check with the team implementing the new forum next week.I can sympathise about Firefox.. it tends to be our browser of choice here too! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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