it appears that jcink is having some sever problems which may affect the GF site so here is what he has to say
QUOTE I am making this post to address the issue of slow page loading. Chances are, you've probably noticed it already, and information on the issue was acknowledged though no official global announcement was made.
From anywhere in between 12PM EST to 11PM EST, pages may hang, or require a refresh or two to pull up. Images wont load without a refresh of the page. Or, you'll get a timeout error period.
We're working on this problem, but the fault does not lie with us. I expect this issue to be fixed by December 3rd, and information will be posted then
If you want a more detailed technical view of what's going on, please read on, I'll try to keep it simple...
In tracing the problem, it has nothing to do with the hardware, the boards, the services, or the website. There's enough RAM, especially enough space after recent upgrades, and with the optimizations I did, the server itself is doing great.
It took me a while to find what the problem was since I did not guess that it could have been... our bandwidth provider, Optimum Online. For over a year, I have paid for premium (admittedly residential) services by this company to get good bandwidth and speed. They have never given me any trouble. Finally, after reviewing every other angle of why pages were loading slowly, I did tests on the line itself, and found that it is their fault, and not anything of my doing.
The quality now has become so poor. I have fought with support on the phone, but it is the same old story with any company it seems, "there is no problem", or, they'll see it's not doing good, and their "fix" is to just reset the modem. Or have me plug in directly and bypass our router to see if it fixes it, which never does. In the last call, it did a harder reset which worked for about 2 days or so, then the issue came back again, and that's why the IP address changed with sudden notice.
Please view these charts.:
http://www.dslreports.com/r3/smokeping.cgi...b38455c2aea7.NY
Understanding these charts is easy. This shows how much "packet loss" is happening on the line. Packet loss is just this; every time you request a page you send a data packet to the server, and it sends one back to you. If the packets are being lost, or dropped in this case, you have very slow pageloads or none at all.
Find the site loading slow? Try viewing that page, which has been constantly monitoring the line for the past week non stop so now I know what's really going on. You will see as much as 50% packet loss during the daytime. You will also notice something if you check these logs around midnight and, up to 4am or so. It will say that the packet loss is is 0%.
Bottom line is, something has gone wrong with them, and they're not saying anything, even for residential premium paying users like me. I'm not the only one with this issue either, if you check on dslreports.com, there are issues abound now. It seems they do not care anymore. They are likely either overcrowding the bandwidth node I'm in, or taking bandwidth, or cheating it out on purpose to save them money. The less complete connections, the better for them.
Optimum bit off more than they could chew, and now everyone has to pay for it.
This has now forced me to go to a business based plan from them.
Some people will probably not like to have heard what I just said before, about us being on although a premium, but still residential based line. I'm being honest with you though, yes, it's been a residential line, not a business, where extra has been paid to have a webserver with better speeds, and to do hosting on it.
The reason for that was; why fix what's not broken? Business obviously costs more, and if I could get the same exact speed and (while it lasted as long as it did) quality with my upgrade, why bother? Little did I know however, they admitted on the phone that they sometimes have to do these things to residential customers so that their business users get the best experience. Wow, gee, thanks for that.
This has made not only the site slow, but my general use of the internet has been terrible. You can't even get google.com to load sometimes anymore. It's extremely unacceptable in my opinion for them to let this go on so long, and it doesn't fly either residentially OR in a business environment.
To solve the problem, I am going to upgrade to a business line. This should fix everything. I don't expect any problems with business class internet (and if there are, they have worse practices in the company than I though). There are 30 days to give it a run. I have a backup plan if this does not work out, but I will let you know those details if I have to.
In the end, it doesn't matter what the cause really is, but I apologize for all the problems, and hope I can get it all solved very soon.
The one change that you can probably expect from a business line is that the IP address is definitely going to change, as it will be a new set of hardware and line. Information will be posted about this when it happens.
Thank you for your patience and understanding, and apologies.
-Jcink
link
QUOTE I am making this post to address the issue of slow page loading. Chances are, you've probably noticed it already, and information on the issue was acknowledged though no official global announcement was made.
From anywhere in between 12PM EST to 11PM EST, pages may hang, or require a refresh or two to pull up. Images wont load without a refresh of the page. Or, you'll get a timeout error period.
We're working on this problem, but the fault does not lie with us. I expect this issue to be fixed by December 3rd, and information will be posted then
If you want a more detailed technical view of what's going on, please read on, I'll try to keep it simple...
In tracing the problem, it has nothing to do with the hardware, the boards, the services, or the website. There's enough RAM, especially enough space after recent upgrades, and with the optimizations I did, the server itself is doing great.
It took me a while to find what the problem was since I did not guess that it could have been... our bandwidth provider, Optimum Online. For over a year, I have paid for premium (admittedly residential) services by this company to get good bandwidth and speed. They have never given me any trouble. Finally, after reviewing every other angle of why pages were loading slowly, I did tests on the line itself, and found that it is their fault, and not anything of my doing.
The quality now has become so poor. I have fought with support on the phone, but it is the same old story with any company it seems, "there is no problem", or, they'll see it's not doing good, and their "fix" is to just reset the modem. Or have me plug in directly and bypass our router to see if it fixes it, which never does. In the last call, it did a harder reset which worked for about 2 days or so, then the issue came back again, and that's why the IP address changed with sudden notice.
Please view these charts.:
http://www.dslreports.com/r3/smokeping.cgi...b38455c2aea7.NY
Understanding these charts is easy. This shows how much "packet loss" is happening on the line. Packet loss is just this; every time you request a page you send a data packet to the server, and it sends one back to you. If the packets are being lost, or dropped in this case, you have very slow pageloads or none at all.
Find the site loading slow? Try viewing that page, which has been constantly monitoring the line for the past week non stop so now I know what's really going on. You will see as much as 50% packet loss during the daytime. You will also notice something if you check these logs around midnight and, up to 4am or so. It will say that the packet loss is is 0%.
Bottom line is, something has gone wrong with them, and they're not saying anything, even for residential premium paying users like me. I'm not the only one with this issue either, if you check on dslreports.com, there are issues abound now. It seems they do not care anymore. They are likely either overcrowding the bandwidth node I'm in, or taking bandwidth, or cheating it out on purpose to save them money. The less complete connections, the better for them.
Optimum bit off more than they could chew, and now everyone has to pay for it.
This has now forced me to go to a business based plan from them.
Some people will probably not like to have heard what I just said before, about us being on although a premium, but still residential based line. I'm being honest with you though, yes, it's been a residential line, not a business, where extra has been paid to have a webserver with better speeds, and to do hosting on it.
The reason for that was; why fix what's not broken? Business obviously costs more, and if I could get the same exact speed and (while it lasted as long as it did) quality with my upgrade, why bother? Little did I know however, they admitted on the phone that they sometimes have to do these things to residential customers so that their business users get the best experience. Wow, gee, thanks for that.
This has made not only the site slow, but my general use of the internet has been terrible. You can't even get google.com to load sometimes anymore. It's extremely unacceptable in my opinion for them to let this go on so long, and it doesn't fly either residentially OR in a business environment.
To solve the problem, I am going to upgrade to a business line. This should fix everything. I don't expect any problems with business class internet (and if there are, they have worse practices in the company than I though). There are 30 days to give it a run. I have a backup plan if this does not work out, but I will let you know those details if I have to.
In the end, it doesn't matter what the cause really is, but I apologize for all the problems, and hope I can get it all solved very soon.
The one change that you can probably expect from a business line is that the IP address is definitely going to change, as it will be a new set of hardware and line. Information will be posted about this when it happens.
Thank you for your patience and understanding, and apologies.
-Jcink
link
