PlanetZ forums - scopeusers.com

I've noticed the site is running very slow this morning, and is giving occasional error 408/409 "resource usage" errors. The ISP says the site is being throttled due to excessive usage. I'm trying to figure out the problem -- they imply the limit of 180mb/hour is being exceeded, which I find VERY surprising, as planetz's daily average is about 350mb/day!!

Is somebody downloading every file on the site, over a high-speed link, or something??

Is the site under attack, or the target of an mp3 spider or something? Maybe I need to add some code to the forums to prevent abuse?

Or maybe the ISP is incorrect. I've entered a request for investigation with them, so we'll see...

Frustrating!!
-John

Oh no !

I was hoping to hang around here for a little while. It's 4:39am here and I should be zzZZZZ but got a prob with unix host on the other side of the country and I have to wait for the tech to get on-site. Bloody recall!!

Oh well, good luck with this JC.

The 408 error comes up much more than before.. strangely. It seems to go on and off. As in, it's either very fast (normal), or I get 408 errors. Kind of strange cuz if it's with the traffic, it shouldn't be that obrupt of a change. Could be something more than just "traffic". Hope things get figured out.

i noticed a slowness on all the web, my general connection is much worst in these last weeks.
a dear friend of mine who works as reporter for reuters press says that's a lot of military communication now, and that's the reason why...

I've noticed it too - in fact I was gonna post a message about it a few days ago. Actually, I've noticed it ever since you changed servers (or host services). It hasn't been as fast as in the past.

I check in a few times during the day and it seems worse during the day. Sometimes, can't get on at all.

I've been thinking about asking about this too, for at least a week now. It's quite often that it takes for ever to get on the site. To me it doesn't look like there's a pattern......?

Thomas

Update: I'm still looking into it. I've been on the phone with the ISP a lot, and they're saying it's throttling due to excessive usage, which doesn't really correlate well with the actual usage vs their bandwidth limits

Frustrating!!
-John

Aha, ok, I think I have a solution...
If I move all the downloadable files into a separate subdomain (like downloads.planetz.com), then the bandwidth on that sub-domain is tracked separately from the rest of the site. So if people are downloading tons of files, those will only cause the download subdomain to be throttled, while the forums continue to run smoothly. I hope!

I'll give a progress report here later.
-John

thanks for the efforts.

I have noticed I couldn’t open the forum, but just for a while, 30 or 40 minutes perhaps then everything works correctly. Right now it’s working fine.

As some of you said here, I too have experienced a real down on the speed of my connection, from about 25 days on. Definitely, something huge is going on…

I have lately had many virus problems on my system, it’s was real scary… Some stupid people started sending all around the world the “yaha W32” kind of viruses and other kind of W32 which are very dangerous cos they can sometimes pass through your Firewalls as well as through certain antivirus software.

If you use Outlook as your mail option, you’d better go to Symantec to download the Bugbear remover; it’s a little program to remove the W32 Bugbear virus.

Take note of that: I’ve got 15 viruses and 2 Trojans in my computer… so guys, you’d better take as much care as possible nowadays, there is a lot going on the Net. I think they were send from Germany and Sweden, cos of the language, but who knows… Fortunately I could remove them all and my system is clean.

I want to report that just right now, 10.06 of night in Chile, I’ve had a strange stop of the Z, similar to when you open a huge application using another, so the resources of your computer get stuck, something like that.

Now it’s suddenly very slow… but it was running real fast… ???

Getting loads of errors connecting to z lately... :/

Ok, I've just implemented a possible solution. I've separated all music files into their own subdomain, and all other downloadables into their own subdomain.

I've noticed in the web access logs that some people appear to be using downloaders which open multiple simulatenous streams (like fresh download?), which really swamp the website when they're downloading. Now, when that happens it'll only swamp the downloads or music subdomain, and the forums should keep running just fine. I hope!

Let me know if it's better/same/worse.

-John

This seems a huge improvement Good idea, John!!

Today I had similar problem to the ones occured in the near past to get the site, i.e. couldn't access the site at all...

Same here

Me three.

working great for me at the moment...

Since I made this change, I haven't seen any problems. Am I just getting lucky or is it really better? Sounds like a few of you are still having problems? Are you still? Is everyone else ok?

I can see in the logs that bandwidth usage for the main site has been cut in half, good thing! There is still the possibility for the occasional bandwidth hog, as there are still some mp3's that need to get moved from the main site into the music.planetz.com subdomain.

Let me know!
-John

I just found a bug in the forums. New uploads were still going to the old location, not the new location. So the new mp3's uploaded (and downloaded) this week were still using the main forum bandwidth. That could be why some people were still having troubles. Hopefully it's even better now.

-John