Steve, Doug:

This is not a complaint, repeat, this is not a complaint.
I suspect something is wrong in my settings or whatever, but.

Site takes up to 20 seconds to load.
Switching between forums or within topics in forums takes from 0 more or less to up to 5 seconds.
At least 5 times a day the site is not available including today.
My e-mail notification still does not work but it does work with 20 or more other sites.

I have a Gateway PC with gobs of power and gobs of memory.
I am on a phone DSL that is very quick with almost all sites.
I am running Windows XP Home Edition.
I am using AOL 9.0 Optimized.
I have cleaned all the caches and all that other jazz several times a day.

Other than when you had "problems" in the past, none of the above problems existed before the recent changes.

Can you suggest what I might look for in settings or whatever that may be causing this deterioration in performance?

If so, make any instructions very simple and very complete as I am an idiot when it comes to computers but I follow well written instructions very well.
Thanks,
Bill

 

Bill,

I suspect that there may be a problem between you and us.

In order for your computer to view our site, it has to request the pages, images, etc. When it does, the request (and answer) travels across a certain, from your computer, to AOL's computers, to other internet providers computers, etc. This is called the "route" that your request takes. Each computer that you speak to in order to get from Point A to Point B (via Points C, D, E, F & G) is referred to as a "hop."

When you see significant delays like the ones you are reporting (which are contrary to what you should be seeing since the server move), there may be a problem with one of the aforementioned "hops."

To see if this is the case, do this:

1) Click on the "Start" button
2) Click "Run..."
3) Type "cmd" (hit enter)
4) Type "tracert f150online.com" (hit enter)

This will show you the route that your request takes, from your computer to our server. If you see any entries that seem to be taking longer than others, or some that display *'s instead of numbers, they may be the culprits.

Logic would dictate that because our server is now in Atlanta, performance for both of us should be better, right? Sadly, that may not be the case. Your request, because you are with AOL, will go through Vienna, VA and then....well...whereever. Since our server used to be in the DC area, it is possible too that AOL had a shorter "hop" for some reason...

Hope that helped.

 

Bill,

FWIW I was experiencing the same delays yesterday and this morning, but as I'm reviewing threads this evening, everything is loading much quicker. I have MSN dial up.

I hope everything's working more quickly for you too.

John

 

OK guys I am going to try to do this on another account, Bell South.net. It may load quicker, already did, but I guess I have to change my email address to get email notifications , No?

 

Steve, just to follow up.

Did what you said to do.
Total of 12 hops
First hop was all asterisks with notation "request timed out"
Of remaining, 10 hops had times of 17-20 ms on each of the three places where these appear.
On hop #11 the numbers were 194 214 236 ms.
The gibberish on the side reads roughly car101 vlan1 at101 inflow.net 661791211 I may have left out a . or so.

Does this give you anything to go on?
Bill

 

Sure does...

That first "hop" shows that the first connection from your computer to the second computer had serious issues, so you had to take evasive action to another computer. That takes time which equates to slow performance before you got within 11 computers of F150online. The last numbers you cite are a bit troubling, but probably just temporary. Ideally, you want to see no stars and all of the numbers under 40.

The gibberish to the right of the numbers are the more human or descriptive names given to these computers. It's interesting to try and decipher these sometimes, as it looks like your route from Kennesaw to Midtown probably went through a computer in the Carolina's (car), to Virginia (vlan), etc.

Steve

 

Thanks, Steve:

To make things easier for all of us I changed my e-mail for forwarding replies to MSN and it works perfectly and everything loads up just like you had hoped. Little bit of a PITA as I do almost all my stuff on AOL and only have MSN at home but I will make do.
Bill

 

Here is what I got:

Over a maximum of 30 hops:

1. 26 32 32 172.16.192.1
2. 8 15 9 snfr-co-ri-gig-e-01.gwi.net (207.5.142.203
3. * * * request timed out
4. * * * request timed out
5. thru 30 were all the same as 3 and 4 above

 

Something interesting, I did the "tracert" to my online cable service which is in the next town/city and the same as above. The first 2 lines are fine then 3 thru 30 are all "request timed out".

Tried to do the "tracert" to where I work (our website) few towns over and the same thing again. After the number 2 everything is "request timed out"... odd

 

I have been having a similar problem, but mine is slightly different than Bill's. The site loads up fine and usually pretty quick. But where I am getting the problem of being unusually slow is when I click on a thread within a forum. Sometimes it will take 10 seconds or more to finally come up. Now I do have dialup with AOL, but most of the time everything on the site comes up rather quickly. I can always tell if it is my end or the site. One thing that I noticed that is happening is that when I first click on the link, it will start to open up and load the top part and the banner at the top. Then at the bottom of IE it will say opening https://www.f150online.com......................., then it will say DONE, even though nothing has opened up. Then it will go back to say opening https://www.f150online.com............... And then the page will finally come up. The longest I have had to wait is like 25 seconds. Now this doesn't happen all of the time, but it has happened several times within the last few days.

Now, I tried to run that tracer that was mentioned earlier and when I type in cmd in the run box, I get the following error.

"Cannot find the file 'cmd' (or one of its components). Make sure the path and filename are correct and that all required libraries are available."

I wanted to run that tracer to see if there were any timeouts or anything. Can you offer any suggestions as to why this may be happening and why I can't access that file?

I don't have this problem of the site being slow all of the time, but there are times when I can go to one forum and everything is fine and then all of the sudden, its like super slow.

 

Well, that definitely explain's XLT's slowness problem. Definitely not our server or datacenter, but your ISP if the 3rd hop is already timing out.

For those systems that do not support "cmd" try "command" or if you an entry on your menu for "DOS Prompt" use that.

 

Okay, I tried the command and this time it worked.

This is what I got:
1. 140ms 136ms 130ms ipt-bk04.dial.aol.com [152.163.11.196]
2-30 were all timed out

 

I've also been having this problem...click to open a thread and the top border loads, and sometimes the ad under it, but after that nothing comes up.

Right now Im not having any problems, but this morning was pretty bad.

Sometimes the page comes up and "cannot be displayed" as well.

Here is my tracert for now:
Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\Documents and Settings\John>tracert f150online.com

Tracing route to f150online.com [66.179.14.118]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.0.1
2 11 ms 10 ms 9 ms 10.177.192.1
3 22 ms 9 ms 9 ms 12.244.114.193
4 10 ms 14 ms 19 ms 12.244.73.2
5 11 ms 26 ms 12 ms gbr6-p80.dlstx.ip.att.net [12.123.17.30]
6 11 ms 15 ms 13 ms tbr1-p012701.dlstx.ip.att.net [12.122.12.69]
7 26 ms 25 ms 25 ms tbr2-cl1.attga.ip.att.net [12.122.2.90]
8 26 ms 24 ms 26 ms gbr6-p40.attga.ip.att.net [12.122.12.46]
9 25 ms 25 ms 36 ms gar2-p370.attga.ip.att.net [12.123.21.77]
10 27 ms 26 ms 26 ms 12.124.58.18
11 25 ms 26 ms 25 ms car0101-vlan-1.atl01.inflow.net [66.179.12.11]
12 26 ms 25 ms 26 ms f150online.com [66.179.14.118]

Trace complete.

C:\Documents and Settings\John>

Im using Comcast cable. No other websites have been having any problems. If Iexperience the problem later I will run another tracert and maybe we can figure out which server is having the slowdown.

 

A possibility when only part of the page loads and then it hangs (until the rest of the page loads) may be you are looking a thread where people have linked to a picture that does not reside on our server. The site has to go and "request" that image (and go through the same process that go through when requesting a page) which may take a few seconds if their server, or the path that our server takes to it, is slow.

 

I, too, have been having this issue. Precisely as Johngs mentioned.

I've tried to make a mental note of the pages that this has been happening to and honestly, the pages typically lack any outside links and generally are composed of text. This includes signature lines.

RP