Loading and navigating ftm.com has been reeeally slow for at least two weeks.

Am I alone in seeing this?

I am on FTM several times a day and I've noticed no problems or slowdowns.

No. But I thought it might be due to my non-broadband Internet connection. And I'm experiencing it now (and not with other websites) — not a lot, but enough to be mildly annoying.

I held off posting because I was having a major DSL problem, but it's been resolved, and FTM remains erratically sluggish...as much as a 5 second response time, and the issue is unique to FTM.

same here, been that way for a week or more. Most of the time it works fine, but periodically I click and it sits there for 5-15 sec before the page loads.

Sometimes it times out and I have to reload it. Especially annoying when I am posting a reply to a thread like now. Once I click Submit, I can no longer highlight and copy my post text. (which I occasionally do before submitting posts, especially larger ones) But then I have to figure out if it actually posted or not. And have a copy of it so I can easily try again of course.

I have noticed it, sporadically.

Ok, it happened to me for the first time this morning, a several second delay trying to navigate in one of the forums.

When you see this problem, can you post the bottom line of the page where it shows the queries and page generation time? For example, "Generated in 0.016 seconds in which 0.003 seconds were spent on a total of 9 queries." If you can do that and also post the date and time, when I return I can dig through the logs and see if we're experiencing any server issues.

Here are two:

Fresh access to the Lounge at 2015-11-13 17:09 CST
Generated in 0.027 seconds in which 0.006 seconds were spent on a total of 13 queries. Zlib compression disabled.

Access to Lounge thread at 2015-11-13 17:10 CST
Generated in 1.324 seconds in which 1.039 seconds were spent on a total of 14 queries. Zlib compression disabled.

I loaded (reloaded, actually) an "Active Topics: Past 24 hours" page after having been away from my computer all day. It took about 8 seconds or so for anything to happen (and then the page loaded instantly). Bottom-of-the-page info:

Generated in 18.235 seconds in which 17.228 seconds were spent on a total of 24 queries.

I subsequently opened half a dozen threads, each in its own tab, all of which loaded straightaway and had numbers more like this:

Generated in 0.025 seconds in which 0.004 seconds were spent on a total of 15 queries.

"Generated in 18.235 seconds in which 17.228 seconds were spent on a total of 24 queries" definitely means something is up with the database server. Figures these things happen when I'm out of town. I'll try to look into it from here when I get a chance (I'm presenting at a conference all weekend).

I've seen numbers like that in the past, but now that they're in the spotlight I'll ask how they can coexist?

In addition to the occasional slow page load as others described, twice this month (earlier today and on Nov 4th) I got the Hostgator.com ERROR 500 - INTERNAL SERVER ERROR screen, so there may definitely be something to your suspicion of server issues.

I've seen the same thing recently, also twice, yesterday or the day before and some indeterminate earlier date.

I didn't make a connection, because I've also seen it on other occasions without having seen any other symptoms.

Using my iPad three days ago (16th, about 20:00 PST) I twice got the message:

UBB Message
We encountered a problem. The reason reported was
Database error only visible to forum administrators

A third attempt got access to the log-in. The issue never happened either before or since.

Seems really zippy today, and I had been experiencing slow loads over the past week.

Here's a doozy at 14:00 CST:

Generated in 2.323 seconds in which 1.570 seconds were spent on a total of 8 queries. Zlib compression disabled.

No such luck here, Ira.

It's erratic as usual...more often slow than not.

Yes, I am back to slow displays on this site today (11/21). Alas.

I've made a backup of the FTM database, checked the health of the database, and verified that the server is working properly. I'm not seeing anything in the logs that might point to a problem, the database integrity checks out OK, and there's nothing that would cause the foulup I can detect. It's a bit frustrating.

If it keeps happening, I'll put in a request to have the host tech support folks look at it, though I'm not sure they can do anything I can't.

Right now, FTM is averaging about 900 visitors a day, and the average visitor stays for about 10 minutes and loads 3 pages. The busiest times of the day are 11 AM to 4 PM server time, on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. I suspect what will happen if I open a tech support case is the techs will simply tell me we need more server resources and will advise moving to a virtual private server, which will add significant expense to running the site.

Do you see a dramatic increase in traffic that would account for the sudden slowdown and make inadequate server resources a reasonable excuse?

(I'm on line all night and at various times during the day, and I see the problem as a 24 hour one.)

Okay, I think I've found the cause, and it's not anything we have control over.

Level 3 Communications, one of the Internet's largest backbone carriers, had a fiber optic trunk cut a few weeks ago. It's caused major Internet congestion and massive slowdowns all over the Web, particularly in and around Texas--where our hosting company is headquartered.

Level 3 is working to repair the trunk and reroute around the problem, but it's been causing headaches all over the Net for weeks now.

Thanks for the update; at least we now know where we stand.

I haven't seen any slowdowns other than at FTM, though. Anybody else?

Edit: "Cut" suggests deliberate?

It was cut, but not deliberately; apparently, construction workers accidentally damaged the trunk.

Got a link with media coverage? It's always entertaining to read about some yutz with a backhoe that doesn't understand the "call before you dig" concept. (and the horror pics of dug up fiber busted in two is always fun to watch like a train wreck)

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/20/level3_outages_reported_in_us/

Wrong time frame!

Even if they're talking about Friday 13th, the problem predates it.

Any ideas?

Hmm, good point. No, still nothing. Hosting company swears everything's okay on their end, and I don't see anything in the server logs or database that indicates a problem. I'm stumped.

If it is just heavy site usage, we might be faced with the difficult choice of figuring out how to pay for more server resources, whether that be putting ads on the site or asking people for donations or whatever it might be.

Wouldn't that be a kick in the head...too much business being bad for business.

I'll ask again if the logs show the kind of usage we're talking about?

Are there any metrics you can look at to see if there's been a substantial increase in traffic recently?

Also you've mentioned getting DDOS'd before, is there a chance there's a low-profile DOS going on?

The logs show steadily, but slowly, increasing usage--not to the point where I'd expect t to have a significant, sudden impact on performance. We're getting popular, but not so much so that it should suddenly be giving us grief.



That was my thought too, but I don't see any sign of an ongoing DDoS at the moment, or for the past month.

This can't be good for business, new business in particular.

Are we just stuck in this rut?

I'm investigating what it will cost to move to a VPN. That will probably resolve the problem (touch wood), but it's going to be expensive: about $60 to $100 a month. Figuring out how to pay for that is the challenge.

This morning I am getting

I've gotten that error message several times – sporadically – over the past month, and each time a second attempt to connect succeeded. (Therefore, it didn't seem worth mentioning.)

I got it four consecutive times this morning. This could be a clue to the slowdown we are seeing.

OK, let me look at the server logs. A big help is if you can record the exact date and time the problem occurs, even if it's only intermittent, so I can tract it down in the logs faster--as you might imagine, they fill up fast.

Sorry I didn't think to capture that information but it was December 3, 2015 roughly 9:00 AM CST.

Two events this morning:

08:12:30 - Very slow to take login information

08:12:55 - Very slow to enter Forum

Around the same time I was totally unable to access FTM and reported same to Cyn via email. I use OpenDNS.
Fifteen minutes later FTM was accessible.

Better to email tacit than me about such issues.

I would have, but FTM was down so I couldn't access his email address; that's now been remedied (and fortunately it's not at the FTM domain).

Tacit will have to tell us what, if anything, has changed but today I am consistently seeing excellent response times. The best I have seen in a few weeks. Hopefully it is a permanent condition.

eh, I'm still getting lag. I think it's fairly random for everyone.

Yep, it does appear to be totally random. I'm seeing lag today, but I can't pin down any consistent pattern to it, and the logs don't show anything useful. This is turning into a frustrating problem.

Do you still want us to advise of events, just in case?

Error 500 - Internal Server Error

1:18:41 EST Dec 10th.

December 10, 2015 11:58 CST I was connected to the site and then it froze completely. I tried several times to re-connect with no success and gave up after maybe 10 minutes. Other web sites were working normally.

Until I clicked on the link for this discussion, things were zipping along. To access this discussion resulted in a slowdown: "Generated in 1.056 seconds in which 0.399 seconds…" was displayed once the page loaded.

The click to post this message: "Generated in 7.514 seconds in which 2.349 seconds…".

Usually the first time posting is tenths or hundredths of a second, so these are really slow loading times from my perspective; and the real time to load was much more than the 1 or 7 seconds indicated.

10:57 AM PST

I've been noticing sporadic albeit frequent slowdowns across the Internet (for about the same length of time that such have been showing up with FTM).
Google-associated sites, including especially Gmail and the search engine, seem to be on permanent slowdown.
There's also been a considerable increase in phishing attempts and other fraud-related activity.
So maybe FTM's issues, sporadic as they are, are a side-effect.
Maybe slowdowns are a by-product of Internet traffic's being shunted through the NSA's servers — or indeed those of all Five Eyes and others — on its way to its legitimate destination.

I dunno if it's blind coincidence or what, but in the 24 hours or so since I upgraded to El Cap and Safari 9.0.2 I've experienced virtually zero lags.

Fingers crossed!

It's coincidence. I've been getting lags frequently but not at predictable intervals.

My x'd fingers must be working; FTM is still running like a dream!

Well, I can't say that things have been all roses, but FTM has responded significantly faster for the past 48 hours...an occasional delay as long as 5-7 seconds, but mostly close to instantaneous.

My run of good luck seems to be over

Me too…

14:07:05 PST today….took quite a while to log in.

I've taken some time to trawl through the access logs and error logs, and I'm not finding anything of note except a strange pattern of requests that's happening about once a day or so that may be an automated scan for security vulnerabilities. We're not being DDoSed and there's nothing the server is reporting that looks at all unusual. I'm seeing no database errors and the FTM database is healthy.

I've enabled additional logging on the server end (which should not have any impact on performance) to see if that shows anything. For the next week or so, please report any slowdowns with the date and time, and if you see any error messages definitely report those with the date and time, because the detailed logs are going to be enormous and difficult to sift through.

Generated in 2.391 seconds in which 0.854 seconds were spent on a total of 12 queries. Zlib compression disabled.
#37840 - 2015-12-15 03:13:03

Generated in 2.646 seconds in which 1.262 seconds were spent on a total of 14 queries. Zlib compression disabled.
12/15/15 @ approx. 07:25 loading the Mac OS X Applications Forum....

I don't know if this is pertinent, but "ERROR 504 - GATEWAY TIMEOUT" from 5:15 to 5:45 AM EST, followed by "ERROR 502 - BAD GATEWAY" until sometime between 6:15 and 7:15 AM.

My FTM reaction time has been near normal for a few days, with hangs having been few, far between, and lasting no more than a few seconds.

(It may actually be better than that; I've been having intermittent Internet slowdowns and can't tell which factor is in play at any given time.)

I could not log in earlier this morning.

PST 05:28:50 - 05:30:05
The blue high-lighting on the log information in the menu bar froze about halfway across the address information.

PST 05:30:35 - 05:31:35
Same as above, but also got a dialogue box saying that Safari couldn't open the page because it couldn't find the server.

At this point I closed Safari and reopened, gave it another try.
PST 05:32:50 - 05:34:10
Frozen highlighting again, gave up.

This most current log-in, a few minutes ago, was just fine.

12/31/2015 10:09 CST

Generated in 4.000 seconds in which 2.670 seconds were spent on a total of 13 queries. Zlib compression disabled.
Powered by UBB.threadsâ„¢ PHP Forum Software 7.5.8

That is up from a 2 second generation time in the previous query.

I'll add to the experience of slow load times in some of the forums on the same date as above at 11:04 PDT.

And one more into the new year:

Generated in 5.958 seconds in which 4.105 seconds were spent on a total of 13 queries. Zlib compression disabled.

On 1/8/2016 at 10:16 AM PDT

....think I "win" with this one.....just happened about a minute ago.

Generated in 18.603 seconds in which 7.060 seconds were spent on a total of 15 queries. Zlib compression disabled.

isn't "generated in" referring to the time it's taking the database server to answer the queries? (as opposed to anything to do with internet connection speed?)

I believe that IS the variable we're trying to isolate here......my internet throughput is in the vicinity of 20 Mbps when experiencing the delay on page loading at FTM.

When things are more normal, the result should look more like this:

Generated in 0.028 seconds in which 0.006 seconds were spent on a total of 14 queries. Zlib compression disabled.



edited to add normal comparison....

earlier there was discussion of a possible problem with the internet connection, and it would appear that this isn't an internet issue but is a local database problem

You have more patience than I (of course my max Internet download is 6 Mbps)! With that long a delay I usually stop the page from loading, reload and at that point it loads with "normal" speed.

Yeah, I didn't have anything else to do at the time.....

I just started paying more attention to the report at the bottom, and after waiting ~25 seconds for a page to load, it come up and said the page was generated in something like 1.35 second, with 16 queries. That appears to be some kind of network lag.

Yes, but a network issue on FTM's end? Everyone experiencing slowdowns on their end is on their own selected network.

pretty sure my 10 gig backbone connection direct to our network center, going out through even faster fiber to the state's ICN network is low latency

At 10:20 Central time Jan 27, 2016 through 10:40 I kept getting repeated UBB Messages and forum response was agonizingly slow. Could this be related to the slowdown issues?

I was using the forums around that time period and noticed nothing awry. I don't know if that helps to narrow things down with this issue.