One more CC Upgrade (Wednesday's short outage WAS the main upgrade)

Roger_Dooley · 11-06-2005, 02:55 PM

As most of you know, we've been making improvements to our forum infrastructure this fall. Despite some major improvements, we've been battling a pesky slowness issue that affects us somewhat randomly. When you see it take forever to load a page, that's what we're talking about. Oddly, seconds later, the forum returns to its normal fraction of a second page loads.

Sometime this week, we'll be upgrading the connectivity between our forum servers to operate at gigabit speed. Our servers will be on their own private network, too, which means they won't be affected by other datacenter traffic. We're quite sure that this will clear up the periodic slowness plus make the forum even snappier than ever.

We'll probably be down for a couple of hours due to physical relocation of servers. We plan to do this in the morning (midwest US) hours to minimize the inconvenience to our members. Thanks for your patience!

momof3sons · 11-06-2005, 05:39 PM

Thanks for this info, Roger. The slowness of the forums has been really frustrating. I would have responded earlier, but it took 15 minutes to load this thread....

fredo · 11-06-2005, 06:15 PM

"Pesky" is one way to put it. Unbelievably annoying and frustrating is another way. I know you guys are trying your best (and I really do appreciate it) but...I want my quick CC back! (I think that makes me a child of the immediate gratification generation).

Roger_Dooley · 11-06-2005, 08:19 PM

We're pulling out all the stops on this... seems OK for now, but we want to clear it up for good.

hazmat · 11-07-2005, 05:32 PM

or are we back and running or running until you can get it complete. I was unable to load the forum most all of today. Now it is slow and I am wondering if this is the FIX?

celebrian25 · 11-07-2005, 05:38 PM

I had the same problem, the page not even loading, and I was confused because usually it says "updating for mantainence" or something to that effect.

MomofWildChild · 11-07-2005, 06:01 PM

Still loading very slowly.

Faline2 · 11-07-2005, 08:01 PM

Not loading in Virginia without about a one minute wait per page...

Roger_Dooley · 11-07-2005, 08:21 PM

Today's outage wasn't the upgrade.

In trying to address the slowness issue prior to the server moves, a server tech made a change that inadvertently cut the communication speed between the servers by a factor of 10. That took the forums down completely, and it took a while to identify and correct the problem.

The slowness issue will be with us for another day or two, max. We have changed the server moves to emergency priority. Thanks (again!) for your patience.

celebrian25 · 11-07-2005, 09:10 PM

Thanks Roger! Even though we constantly nag about it, I love how responsive you guys are to it, and I REALLY appreciate it.

banedon17 · 11-07-2005, 09:41 PM

so that's why i keep getting a "page not found" message.

but it's rather quick for me though. i don't experience the slowness anymore.

Roger_Dooley · 11-07-2005, 10:59 PM

The slowness comes and goes. Normally, it takes about a quarter of a second to generate a page (you may not see it that quickly depending on your connection). When we hit the slowness wall, it can take many seconds. The good news is, we think we know the cause now and the changes we'll make (maybe Wednesday AM?) should clear it up.

smartmind · 11-08-2005, 02:32 AM

so relieved to hear this news........ hope that CC becomes the super speed demon as it was

smartmind · 11-08-2005, 02:45 AM

I was trying hard last day or two to connect to CC but sorrt of guessed it at the end that it was one of those short upgrades ...so guess i was right

aaron56 · 11-08-2005, 07:33 AM

stupid me thought i'd been banned or sth!