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stevegrant

stevegrant

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, Lord Duckhunter said:

The lounge does seem to be an issue

Wonder if that might be as a result of the huge threads in that forum. In theory it shouldn't make any difference as it should only be looking at the topic itself, not any of the posts inside, but the way some of this site works under the hood, I wouldn't be surprised if there's some horrendous query that's slowing it down :rolleyes:

Fatboy40

Fatboy40

Posted
Posted
On 06/09/2020 at 15:02, stevegrant said:

phpBB still exists, but it's pretty basic these days...

Basic is good, unless you need embedded advertising etc., less to go wrong and I think it scales quite well 😄

Do you mind if I ask what DB you're running this forum on? Is it one of Amazon's own...

https://aws.amazon.com/products/databases/

... or a different one hosted in a VM on AWS?

striker

striker

Posted
Posted
On 05/09/2020 at 16:20, aintforever said:

It wasn’t working at all for me then I went into notifications settings and turned them all off and now it’s fine. I can start posting crap again now.

Yes, this worked for me too. Once I turned off all notifications it runs much faster. I wonder if there is an issue there?

Plastic

Plastic

Posted
Posted (edited)
17 hours ago, stevegrant said:

Must admit I'm not 100% sure where I'd isolate any of those issues, tbh.

@stevegrant - Sorry I'm not a website guy, but I can see where redirection issues may be causing problems. The site address is an alias for your cloudfront load balancer (dan1o7ct3u5eb.cloudfront.net) which has multiple VIPs, I was having a site performance issue so I flushed my DNS and received one of the alternate VIPs (see below) which seemed to resolve the 'waiting for cache' browser issues. Do you have the ability to scale your load balancer back to a single VIP to rule out a routing or DNS timeout issue? It may also be that TTL or similar records on the load balancer need tweaking. As I say, not a website guy so lots of speculation here based on infrastructure experience.

Quote

C:\Users\xxx>ping www.saintsweb.co.uk

Pinging dan1o7ct3u5eb.cloudfront.net [99.86.249.62] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 99.86.249.62: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=233
Reply from 99.86.249.62: bytes=32 time=15ms TTL=233
Reply from 99.86.249.62: bytes=32 time=13ms TTL=233

Ping statistics for 99.86.249.62:
    Packets: Sent = 12, Received = 12, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 13ms, Maximum = 26ms, Average = 15ms

C:\Users\xxx>ipconfig -flushdns

Windows IP Configuration

Successfully flushed the DNS Resolver Cache.

C:\Users\xxx>ping www.saintsweb.co.uk

Pinging dan1o7ct3u5eb.cloudfront.net [99.86.249.11] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 99.86.249.11: bytes=32 time=13ms TTL=234
Reply from 99.86.249.11: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=234

Ping statistics for 99.86.249.11:
    Packets: Sent = 15, Received = 15, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 13ms, Maximum = 31ms, Average = 15ms
 

 

Edited by Plastic
  • Confused 1
benjii

benjii

Posted
Posted
2 minutes ago, Plastic said:

@stevegrant - Sorry I'm not a website guy, but I can see where redirection issues may be causing problems. The site address is an alias for your cloudfront load balancer (dan1o7ct3u5eb.cloudfront.net) which has multiple VIPs, I was having a site performance issue so I flushed my DNS and received one of the alternate VIPs (see below) which seemed to resolve the 'waiting for cache' browser issues. Do you have the ability to scale your load balancer back to a single VIP to rule out a routing or DNS timeout issue? It may also be that TTL or similar records on the load balancer need tweaking. As I say, not a website guy so lots of speculation here based on infrastructure experience.

 

I was going to say that too.

  • Haha 3
Lord Duckhunter

Lord Duckhunter

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, stevegrant said:

Wonder if that might be as a result of the huge threads in that forum. In theory it shouldn't make any difference as it should only be looking at the topic itself, not any of the posts inside, but the way some of this site works under the hood, I wouldn't be surprised if there's some horrendous query that's slowing it down :rolleyes:

Appreciate your hard work, there must be times you wonder if it’s worth it.
 

I haven’t got a clue about these sort of things, but is it worth adding another sub forum, a Lounge mk 2 sort of thing. I’d imagine people will only be interested in saving the Pompey thread, every other topic could be discussed afresh. 

trousers

trousers

Posted
Posted
47 minutes ago, Plastic said:

@stevegrant - Sorry I'm not a website guy, but I can see where redirection issues may be causing problems. The site address is an alias for your cloudfront load balancer (dan1o7ct3u5eb.cloudfront.net) which has multiple VIPs, I was having a site performance issue so I flushed my DNS and received one of the alternate VIPs (see below) which seemed to resolve the 'waiting for cache' browser issues. Do you have the ability to scale your load balancer back to a single VIP to rule out a routing or DNS timeout issue? It may also be that TTL or similar records on the load balancer need tweaking. As I say, not a website guy so lots of speculation here based on infrastructure experience.

 

Beat me to it

stknowle

stknowle

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, Plastic said:

@stevegrant - Sorry I'm not a website guy, but I can see where redirection issues may be causing problems. The site address is an alias for your cloudfront load balancer (dan1o7ct3u5eb.cloudfront.net) which has multiple VIPs, I was having a site performance issue so I flushed my DNS and received one of the alternate VIPs (see below) which seemed to resolve the 'waiting for cache' browser issues. Do you have the ability to scale your load balancer back to a single VIP to rule out a routing or DNS timeout issue? It may also be that TTL or similar records on the load balancer need tweaking. As I say, not a website guy so lots of speculation here based on infrastructure experience.

 

Think you’re looking too deeply into it. There’s a gremlin in the system, that’s all. 

Shroppie

Shroppie

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, Plastic said:

Sorry I'm not a website guy, but I can see where redirection issues may be causing problems. The site address is an alias for your cloudfront load balancer (dan1o7ct3u5eb.cloudfront.net) which has multiple VIPs, I was having a site performance issue so I flushed my DNS and received one of the alternate VIPs (see below) which seemed to resolve the 'waiting for cache' browser issues. Do you have the ability to scale your load balancer back to a single VIP to rule out a routing or DNS timeout issue? It may also be that TTL or similar records on the load balancer need tweaking. As I say, not a website guy so lots of speculation here based on infrastructure experience.

Can't believe it was so simple.

  • Haha 1
Saint Billy

Saint Billy

Posted
Posted (edited)

I have been unable to get on for a few days now but managed to via the back door method today but still couldn’t access the main board, so I logged out and logged in again and now I can get on the main board with speed, still cannot get into the Lounge though. Would it have anything to do with cookies on our pc’s etc from the old database screwing up the present system?.

Btw, I can get on the lounge now, everything really fast.

Edited by Saint Billy
stevegrant

stevegrant

Posted
Posted
7 hours ago, Fatboy40 said:

Basic is good, unless you need embedded advertising etc., less to go wrong and I think it scales quite well 😄

Do you mind if I ask what DB you're running this forum on? Is it one of Amazon's own...

https://aws.amazon.com/products/databases/

... or a different one hosted in a VM on AWS?

We're using an AWS MariaDB instance - not one of the most powerful ones, but it should be plenty for what this place does. In fact, the day/night of the Man City game during the restart when we set our new record for most people online simultaneously, we were actually on a smaller DB instance than we have now and it held firm. There's no real correlation between traffic and performance.

6 hours ago, Plastic said:

@stevegrant - Sorry I'm not a website guy, but I can see where redirection issues may be causing problems. The site address is an alias for your cloudfront load balancer (dan1o7ct3u5eb.cloudfront.net) which has multiple VIPs, I was having a site performance issue so I flushed my DNS and received one of the alternate VIPs (see below) which seemed to resolve the 'waiting for cache' browser issues. Do you have the ability to scale your load balancer back to a single VIP to rule out a routing or DNS timeout issue? It may also be that TTL or similar records on the load balancer need tweaking. As I say, not a website guy so lots of speculation here based on infrastructure experience

I don't think I have the option to do that, but will have a poke around to see if it's possible.

  • Like 1
manzo

manzo

Posted
Posted
On 06/09/2020 at 19:51, Plastic said:

@stevegrant someone mentioned incognito mode / cleared cookies yielded a quicker response and I have to say I’ve seen similar. Although you may have a DB latency issue, I wonder if you may also be caching dynamic load balancer / responding node addresses in-browser which are causing the bad gateway issues.

worth a look anyway as I can’t see any reason why high latency DB queries would resolve to a bad gateway response. 

Is that not more likely that as you're not logged in, it's going to query the database a lot less when you come to the site, as it's not getting the data to show if there are unread posts in each thread, whether you've posted in any threads?

From what Steve has said, this just sounds like thoroughly shite software. The lack of database indexes alone is, frankly, unbelievable. That gives me little confidence that the new version of the software will be much better, unless they've got some new people on board who actually have the slightest clue how to design and code a low-to-middling performing website.

If the Lounge is still struggling, is it worth attempting to add some database indexes? I know that they can take days to add, but it could solve all the performance issues.

alehouseboys

alehouseboys

Posted
Posted
On 05/09/2020 at 22:20, aintforever said:

It wasn’t working at all for me then I went into notifications settings and turned them all off and now it’s fine. I can start posting crap again now.

 

18 hours ago, striker said:

Yes, this worked for me too. Once I turned off all notifications it runs much faster. I wonder if there is an issue there?

Yep, did this too and now appears to have sorted the getting-in issues....

jasonb

jasonb

Posted
Posted
35 minutes ago, alehouseboys said:

 

Yep, did this too and now appears to have sorted the getting-in issues....

Wow. Turned everything off and the site is blazing fast. I dont need all that fancy stuff anyway. 

RobM

RobM

Posted
Posted

I'm finding it very consistent now, but not perfect. The initial access takes circa. 30 seconds, it just sits and waits. Once it loads, everything is flying as you'd hope and expect, even if I leave the site for a short while and come back. It's just that initial connection that's the killer, which makes me believe @Plastic is right, and the subsequent TTL means it has to repeat the process each day.

kwsaint

kwsaint

Posted
Posted

Found that getting into the site using IE is really slow, but worked perfectly well with Firefox.  Then went into IE and switched off notifications.  Hey presto worked really well.  Thanks everyone.

Plastic

Plastic

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, manzo said:

Is that not more likely that as you're not logged in, it's going to query the database a lot less when you come to the site, as it's not getting the data to show if there are unread posts in each thread, whether you've posted in any threads?

From what Steve has said, this just sounds like thoroughly shite software. The lack of database indexes alone is, frankly, unbelievable. That gives me little confidence that the new version of the software will be much better, unless they've got some new people on board who actually have the slightest clue how to design and code a low-to-middling performing website.

If the Lounge is still struggling, is it worth attempting to add some database indexes? I know that they can take days to add, but it could solve all the performance issues.

Good point. The change of responding IP via DNS flush did make a difference to load time in a standard session for me though, so I do think there is some load balancing oddness happening. 

1 hour ago, jasonb said:

Wow. Turned everything off and the site is blazing fast. I dont need all that fancy stuff anyway. 

Just done the same, and it seems to have worked for me too, though you do need to turn ALL notifications off.

stevegrant

stevegrant

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, Plastic said:

Good point. The change of responding IP via DNS flush did make a difference to load time in a standard session for me though, so I do think there is some load balancing oddness happening.

The weirdest thing is that the load balancer is effectively just a firewall at the moment because we only need one web server right now, so I would have thought traffic just automatically passes straight through, there's no logic for the load balancer to consider.

Auto-scaling is in place if it's needed, as that's just a prudent way of setting things up so I don't need to manually change things when traffic increases significantly, as it does at half-time and full-time during games.

53 minutes ago, skintsaint said:

Alt+F4

:lol:

S-Clarke

S-Clarke

Posted
Posted (edited)

This place, for me anyway, is absolutely flawless now. I can get straight on all the time.

Tiny slow downs occasionally, but 9/10 I'm able to get in. Posting a reply can sometimes take 10-20 seconds, but that's no drama.

The lounge is a weird oddity though as that does time out for me, but I never really went in there anyway!

Edited by S-Clarke
Saint Keef

Saint Keef

Posted
Posted

I think this is the 4th or 5th day that I haven't had a problem on here. Thank you to Steve and to anyone else who helped get it sorted. 

However some of the advice from those who obviously know far more about IT and computers than I, reminded me of just how out of touch I am with these things and baffled me as much as the Chinese graphics/letters/words? on the front of an LD Sports sponsored Saints shirt. I didn't have a clue what they said either.

Anyway - the site seems to be working fine and long may it do so.

Lets B Avenue

Lets B Avenue

Posted
Posted
9 hours ago, SaintBobby said:

Weirdly brokne for me...i can get on about 20% of the time...80% i get lag and 504s

I find that when I get the 504 I refresh the page immediately and it works.

Using the "Go to Topic Listing" doesn't often work for me.

RobM

RobM

Posted
Posted (edited)

It has gone backwards for me today. Getting to the main forum index is quick, but it then takes 30seconds to get into a subform. Once that's done, everything is fast other than submitting a post, which takes 10seconds.

Edited by RobM
Wurzel

Wurzel

Posted
Posted

Seem to get on every time now. The initial page load seems to hang about 30 secs before any, thing appears but once it's loaded swapping between topics/next page etc as quick as could hope for.  Not sure what you've done to it  @stevegrant but it's a 👍 from me*

 

 

*Subject to review after today's match thread gets going

  • Like 1
S-Clarke

S-Clarke

Posted
Posted (edited)

Bump to this - absolutely flawless pre and post match for me. Impressive.

I had days of not being able to get on here over the last few months, but since last weekend it's been flawless. Nice one Steve on whatever has been changed, as it's a different kettle of fish now.

Edited by S-Clarke
  • Like 1
M271

M271

Posted
Posted (edited)

Slower this morning so far, had my first 504 for 10 days.

Speeded up again now, hopefully it was a temporary blip.

Edited by M271
stevegrant

stevegrant

Posted
Posted

I had a load of email notifications this morning from a monitoring system telling me the site was up and down fairly regularly in the space of an hour or so.

In all honesty, I've not really done much to have made it more stable over the last week or so, other than starting the re-indexing process which takes at least a week - it's currently 86% of the way through :rolleyes:

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