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Pages loading very slowly
Posted by Boyd on Friday, March 25, 2011 12:33 AM

I have a Mac mini that was upgraded 1 week ago, high speed internet, good computer security and protection anti virus etc. Everywhere else I go on the net pages load instantly. On this site it takes 30 40 or 50 seconds to load a page. What is going on?

Modeling the "Fargo Area Rapid Transit" in O scale 3 rail.

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Posted by selector on Friday, March 25, 2011 1:00 AM

I don't know.  The model fellas are getting quite ticked off over many nights of this phenomenon.   It seems to happen about the time the server is programmed to do its daily backup. 

I have alerted the IT people, and have an acknowledgement privately.  They are looking into it.  That was yesterday.

Crandell

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Posted by AgentKid on Friday, March 25, 2011 7:21 AM

I tried to get on last night at about 10:00 PM MDT and the server timed out on me once before I could get in. But then strangely enough all the pages on the site loaded as fast as I have ever seen them do it. Maybe this backup you were speaking of was finished, but the contrast between trying to get on and the way it acted after I was on was striking.

Bruce

 

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Posted by Anonymous on Friday, March 25, 2011 7:45 AM

Lots of times in the evening, I can't even get on because it loads so slowly.  It seems to be confined to after 6:00 PM, and has been occurring for at least three weeks, almost daily.

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Posted by BaltACD on Friday, March 25, 2011 8:36 AM

I have also been getting time outs in the evening....Eastern Time

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Posted by samfp1943 on Friday, March 25, 2011 8:39 AM

I Tend to have experienced similar problems with loading the site when logging in in the evenings, specifically.  Also have noted that the user count was above 85 (on-line) . at this time it shows 76 and the loading is not as fast as normally experienced during daylight mornings.

My guess would be Kalmbach is utilizing their servers for daily business. 

(Imagine THAT! )Crying   Another possible explanation for the site being slow at night would be a daily back-up procedure. {At the Company I worked for they backed up each night between 12 AM and 2 AM).  In this Computer Age we were reduced to the yellow tablet and pencil for those times, and then spent the rest of the sift entering the data from the yellow tablet- What a drag, that was! GrumpyBang Head

OK, I'M OFF THE MY SOAPBOX   SoapBox.

 

 


 

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Posted by Modelcar on Friday, March 25, 2011 9:02 AM

....Well that makes me feel a bit better.  I've been experiencing similar results working with the  forum in the evening.  Thought I had trouble on my end....Others {web sites}, were seemingly normal.

Quentin

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Posted by blue streak 1 on Friday, March 25, 2011 9:18 AM

samfp1943

I Tend to have experienced similar problems with loading the site when logging in in the evenings, specifically.  Also have noted that the user count was above 85 (on-line) . at this time it shows 76 and the loading is not as fast as normally experienced during daylight mornings.

I believe that it would be very helpful to Kalmbach for us to note the number "Who is online" (number) and report when speed is very slow. right now I show 64 and it is speedy. Last night I had to wait 20 minutes for an upload but did not note number. Great idea samfp1943!!..

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Posted by CShaveRR on Friday, March 25, 2011 9:24 AM

I've been experiencing wi-fi problems here, and just thought that getting on the Forum was another manifestation of that.  In a way, I'm relieved to find out otherwise.  I'll pay closer attention, because I don't think the problem will be solved overnight.  (56 online)

Carl

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Posted by BaltACD on Friday, March 25, 2011 9:30 AM

Right now...1030 AM Eastern .... Response is OK with 64 on line.

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Posted by Mookie on Friday, March 25, 2011 3:17 PM

Blame it on sunspots....Mischief

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Posted by CShaveRR on Friday, March 25, 2011 4:07 PM

Still fine, at 93.

Carl

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Posted by tree68 on Friday, March 25, 2011 4:23 PM

And it may have nothing to do with this forum at all - unless Kalmbach hosts this forum on their own servers, odds are they are contracting with a vendor who also hosts other websites, etc. 

Even if Kalmbach does host their own, I believe they have other non-railroad publications under their umbrella.

Given that their "pipe" is only so big (you pay for bandwidth), it could be that other company sites unrelated to Trains are causing the slowdown.  That means it's possible to have 200 users on Trains forums with lightning fast response, or just 20 with a really slow response.

Too, it's not a "direct line" between their servers and your computer - there are many "hops" involved.  I just did a trace to Milwaukee and it passed through 13 routers.  Any of those could be busy enough to slow web traffic.

I've spent a few years in this business...

LarryWhistling
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Posted by CShaveRR on Friday, March 25, 2011 7:26 PM

Larry, you may have a point there--I'm no expert, by any means.  However, I've noticed a marked slowdown after 7:00 (and after sunset, SJ), with only 62 people on our site.

Carl

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Posted by Murphy Siding on Friday, March 25, 2011 7:52 PM

Mookie

Blame it on sunspots....Mischief

   Is that thing still up there?  We haven't had a sunny day in forever.  It's enough to give a guy cabin fever after the long winter we've had.  Good thing I have high speed internet.  I can go to my favorite website and......................dang!Sigh

Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.

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Posted by dakotafred on Friday, March 25, 2011 8:22 PM

I've noticed, like others, the slowness of recent days. It's really bad tonight.

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Posted by Modelcar on Friday, March 25, 2011 8:51 PM

....Whatever the reason....it's certainly slower than earlier today.  Has something changed.....More customers to "travel" thru the same circuits.

Quentin

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Posted by welmblad on Friday, March 25, 2011 9:03 PM
We are aware of the problem and continue to chase down these gremlins. Thank you for the feedback as it helps to isolate by the times you are posting.

Online Publishing Manager, Kalmbach Publishing Co.,

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Posted by samfp1943 on Friday, March 25, 2011 9:43 PM

welmblad
We are aware of the problem and continue to chase down these gremlins. Thank you for the feedback as it helps to isolate by the times you are posting.

 

 

2140 CDT shows 70 on-line and very slow loading. 2-3 min to get signed in and 4 min to get into this thread. Crying

Thanks, for working on it!Yes

 

 


 

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Posted by Modelcar on Friday, March 25, 2011 9:43 PM

....Thanks.....now we know someone is chasing it...

Quentin

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Posted by tree68 on Friday, March 25, 2011 9:44 PM

I'm able to trace to "trains.com" as far as Chicago, at which point it fails, probably a firewall issue.

Curiously, I can trace all the way to "milwaukeecounty.org," but that one picks up the hosting company's network in Chicago.

LarryWhistling
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Posted by blue streak 1 on Friday, March 25, 2011 10:08 PM

1007 CDT 90 online and speed medium about 1 1-1/2 minutes

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Posted by blue streak 1 on Friday, March 25, 2011 10:20 PM

1020 CDT 89 online and loading 10 - 20 seconds.

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Posted by Anonymous on Monday, March 28, 2011 8:52 PM

2 minutes to load right nowl.  Never have seen it this bad!

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Posted by erikem on Tuesday, March 29, 2011 12:37 AM

I'd estimate some pages were taking 15 to 30 minutes to load, had to hit retry at least a dozen times on some pages. "Who is online" was showing 49 during the slow time. At 10:30PM PDT, the load times dropped to a couple of seconds.

The problem was not congestion on my end - pages from other sites would load up in a couple of seconds and the modem lights were not showing any traffic most of the time when waiting for Trains.com pages to load.

- Erik

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Posted by CShaveRR on Tuesday, March 29, 2011 8:07 AM

Last night was a disaster from here--I couldn't even get on the site to see how many others were trying.  Not so bad this morning.

Just hope that the powers that be were watching, or maybe able to do something eventually.

Carl

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Posted by Paul_D_North_Jr on Tuesday, March 29, 2011 9:50 AM

"+1" to the 1st paragraph of Carl's post.  At 7:40 PM EDST I couldn't get onto  anything - not the Forums, and not even the linked NewsWire articles from the weekly e-mail update. 

At 9:15 PM until I quit at about 10:30 PM - again, both EDST times - I could access the Forum and some threads intermittently - but at least one "timed out" and I got the "Oops - Something went wrong!" error message.  About half of my attempts loaded in 20 - 30 seconds, but the other half seemed to stall about 1/3 of the way through - based on the lack of progress of the green 'bar scale' at the bottom of the page - so I chose to abort them.  That included even simple tasks such as pulling the drop-down menu to edit a post ! (to fix some typos)   

As Erik noted, the problem surely wasn't at my end - I has no problems accessing other sites and doing some word-processing while I was waiting . . .  Whistling

- Paul North. 

"This Fascinating Railroad Business" (title of 1943 book by Robert Selph Henry of the AAR)
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Posted by Anonymous on Tuesday, March 29, 2011 11:16 AM

I wonder how long it will take to fix the problem.  It has been going on for 3-4 weeks.  Forum participation is nearly impossbile in the evenings.  This kind of experience will discourage participation overall, even when the forum is working properly.     

Even when the problem is finally fixed, it could take a long time for the fourm traffic to finally recover to the level it once was.  The level of participation is a forum's greates asset.  It seems a shame to squander it due to a technical problem. 

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Posted by Anonymous on Tuesday, March 29, 2011 11:55 AM

Last night was the worst I've experienced.  Trying to get the page loaded was the slowest part. Once loaded, I was able to move about fairly quickly.  But, I logged off thinking I was done, then thought I should edit what I posted, and time passed s-l-o-w-l-y trying to get back on.

I'm in agreement with Bucyrus, it will take a bit of time once the problem is fixed before the night time traffic will build back up, which I hope it will.

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Posted by BaltACD on Tuesday, March 29, 2011 2:28 PM

Paul has nailed my experience last night in the same time frame.  I might add that normally the evening EDT is a time when a significant amount of forum activity normally takes place.

Paul_D_North_Jr

"+1" to the 1st paragraph of Carl's post.  At 7:40 PM EDST I couldn't get onto  anything - not the Forums, and not even the linked NewsWire articles from the weekly e-mail update. 

At 9:15 PM until I quit at about 10:30 PM - again, both EDST times - I could access the Forum and some threads intermittently - but at least one "timed out" and I got the "Oops - Something went wrong!" error message.  About half of my attempts loaded in 20 - 30 seconds, but the other half seemed to stall about 1/3 of the way through - based on the lack of progress of the green 'bar scale' at the bottom of the page - so I chose to abort them.  That included even simple tasks such as pulling the drop-down menu to edit a post ! (to fix some typos)   

As Erik noted, the problem surely wasn't at my end - I has no problems accessing other sites and doing some word-processing while I was waiting . . .  Whistling

- Paul North. 

Never too old to have a happy childhood!

              

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