Forum performance

[Chris Dee]

The response times on this forum, for me in the UK, are barely acceptable (e.g. 10s to preview this message). What are experiences elsewhere? If this is the server where we might host ldraw.org, then I think we should think again.

Chris

[Orion Pobursky]

I've noticed fluctuating load times but the current server is far, far worse.

[Chris Dee]

I disagree, but then I rarely use LDraw.org in the US evening. I do see a performance drop on the Parts Tracker in European afternoons, when the US wakes up.

However, I think the performance expectations of a forum service are different from a complex web application like the Parts Tracker. The are some aspects of the Parts Tracker which deliberately do not happen in real time - submissions are only processed every 5 minutes, to avoid resource conflicts. We should be comparing the performance of this forum with LUGNET (for those able to post there). From my perspective, this doesn't measure up at the moment.

Chris

[Orion Pobursky]

Well load time is a bit slower than Lugnet on my Mac by on my iPhone it's just as fast. Not sure why. Probably CPU load.

Anyway, posting is way faster than Lugnet. For some reason, when I hit post on Lugnet, it loads for a good 30-60 sec. Additionally, the ldraw.org main site can be really, really slow at times. Slow to the point of frustration. Haven't seen that here.

[Chris Dee]

The ping times are not significantly different (33ms for forum.ldraw.org, 30ms for news.lugnet.com), so it's likely to be related to the server performance or the forum software.

Chris

[Roland Melkert]

You posted awhile back you host this on your own server. But does that machine have 'server specs'? I mean a decent server needs basically only 3 things:

A crap load of memory (the more it can cache the db etc)
Multicore cpu (the more clients it can serve at once).
Broadband symmetrical connection (you can't host a site for hundreds of clients while using a upload of e.g. 500kbs)

Also the server' os and forum platform have things to say but hardware wise these are the three things to check.