Server problems

Captain Picard's Hair · Thu Jan 10, 2008 2:16 am

I have reduced the settings in fasterfox to a level that supposedly does not place additional stress on servers; I'll let you know how it goes.

Post by **IanKennedy** » Thu Jan 10, 2008 9:08 am

Captain Picard's Hair wrote:I do have fasterfox in Mozilla; my persistent connections per server are at 8, per proxy at 16.

I would half each of the settings. The defaults for this value are 2 and 4, this ensures fair use of the server by all visitors not just those few who have a very high connection number. The recent changes to the server (about November time) enforce a limit, when it is exceeded you get an error 503, which is soon to be changed to 409.

In either case I've created custom error pages to deal with the issue in a better way, I'll enable those in a in a little time.
Thanks
Ian

Jordanis · Post by **Jordanis** » Thu Jan 10, 2008 12:08 pm

Well, at least that mystery is solved. I'm fairly certain it was something that came up in one of the perennial 'tweak firefox for best performance' articles that go around, advertised as a speed tweak. November sounds about right for the time-frame, too.

Captain Peabody · Post by **Captain Peabody** » Fri Jan 11, 2008 12:01 am

Now that you've figured out what's wrong, how would I go about fixing this problem? I'm running IE...

Thanks,

Post by **IanKennedy** » Fri Jan 11, 2008 4:16 pm

Captain Peabody wrote:Now that you've figured out what's wrong, how would I go about fixing this problem? I'm running IE...

Thanks,

OK, First I need to ask if you are happy editing the registry. If so they you need to follow this document from Microsoft

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/183110

I would set both values to 2 or at most 4. The higher the value the more things you are trying to grab from websites at the same time. Setting it too high is unfair to other users of the system, as there are only a finite number of connections to go around.

Please can you let me know what the values where before you change them.
Thanks
Ian

Captain Peabody · Post by **Captain Peabody** » Fri Jan 11, 2008 5:05 pm

Yeeeeeha! The site's working again! No more Service Temporarily Unavailable signs or blank boxes! It's a miracle...

I changed both values to 2...previously, they were set to 4 and 8, respectively.

Thank you very much...

Post by **IanKennedy** » Fri Jan 11, 2008 6:28 pm

Glad to hear the fix is working for the three people that have responded so far. Any more people please follow the instructions for the specific browser. By all means tell us if it doesn't solve the problem.
Thanks
Ian

Captain Picard's Hair · Fri Jan 11, 2008 6:56 pm

I no longer seem to be having any problems.

Post by **IanKennedy** » Sat Jan 12, 2008 7:20 pm

Captain Picard's Hair wrote:I no longer seem to be having any problems.

Great... Thanks for letting us know.
Ian

Ivan_Only · Post by **Ivan_Only** » Tue Feb 26, 2008 1:01 pm

Jordanis wrote:Well, at least that mystery is solved. I'm fairly certain it was something that came up in one of the perennial 'tweak firefox for best performance' articles that go around, advertised as a speed tweak. November sounds about right for the time-frame, too.

I am having this issue in Firefox, but not in IE
I have made no changes to any of the Connection settings

The Default Values for Firefox are 12 connections and 22 persistent.

There are a few problems I see with this "fix"

1. The change is global, so it affects your connection to ANY site
2. I have this problem with NO other site

Since I am unwilling to change any setting for a single site, even though this is an awesome site, I will simply have to view it in IE.

Post by **IanKennedy** » Tue Feb 26, 2008 1:19 pm

Ivan_Only wrote:
Jordanis wrote:Well, at least that mystery is solved. I'm fairly certain it was something that came up in one of the perennial 'tweak firefox for best performance' articles that go around, advertised as a speed tweak. November sounds about right for the time-frame, too.
I am having this issue in Firefox, but not in IE
I have made no changes to any of the Connection settings

The Default Values for Firefox are 12 connections and 22 persistent.

There are a few problems I see with this "fix"

1. The change is global, so it affects your connection to ANY site
2. I have this problem with NO other site

Since I am unwilling to change any setting for a single site, even though this is an awesome site, I will simply have to view it in IE.

If you are seeing this issue then you or someone else has changed the settings on your computer. This is easy to confirm. Simply follow the instructions for changing the settings, and see what the numbers are. If they are higher than standard they you are causing issues for people on every site you visit, not just ours. You are in effect hogging resources meant for other users. Our server now prevents that from taking place so you have no choice to misbehave on our system. What you do with other servers is not our problem.

The settings for IE are completely separate from those for Firefox so it's quite possible to see the issue with one browser and not the other, in fact that is a major indicator that these settings have actually been changed. Looking at the numbers you give 12 and 22, these are massively high compared with the default values for the software. The defaults are 2 and 4 respectively. Having you settings 5 to 6 times higher than the standard value is causing issues for other users of every system you visit. You are seeing problems with us simply because we have chosen to prevent that unfair behavour. You will find that more and more sites will switch to blocking this over time.

Ivan_Only · Post by **Ivan_Only** » Tue Feb 26, 2008 1:52 pm

IanKennedy wrote:
Ivan_Only wrote:
Jordanis wrote:Well, at least that mystery is solved. I'm fairly certain it was something that came up in one of the perennial 'tweak firefox for best performance' articles that go around, advertised as a speed tweak. November sounds about right for the time-frame, too.
I am having this issue in Firefox, but not in IE
I have made no changes to any of the Connection settings

The Default Values for Firefox are 12 connections and 22 persistent.

There are a few problems I see with this "fix"

1. The change is global, so it affects your connection to ANY site
2. I have this problem with NO other site

Since I am unwilling to change any setting for a single site, even though this is an awesome site, I will simply have to view it in IE.
If you are seeing this issue then you or someone else has changed the settings on your computer. This is easy to confirm. Simply follow the instructions for changing the settings, and see what the numbers are. If they are higher than standard they you are causing issues for people on every site you visit, not just ours. You are in effect hogging resources meant for other users. Our server now prevents that from taking place so you have no choice to misbehave on our system. What you do with other servers is not our problem.

The settings for IE are completely separate from those for Firefox so it's quite possible to see the issue with one browser and not the other, in fact that is a major indicator that these settings have actually been changed. Looking at the numbers you give 12 and 22, these are massively high compared with the default values for the software. The defaults are 2 and 4 respectively. Having you settings 5 to 6 times higher than the standard value is causing issues for other users of every system you visit. You are seeing problems with us simply because we have chosen to prevent that unfair behavour. You will find that more and more sites will switch to blocking this over time.

Ya, my bad. I never changed these items since my last install of Firefox, however DownThemAll, a add on for Firefox, must have changed them. And of course I only realized this AFTER I hit Submit.

Now...if I could only find a way to remove this foot from my mouth.

BTW, Awesome site, I have been looking at it for years!

Post by **IanKennedy** » Tue Feb 26, 2008 1:55 pm

Ivan_Only wrote:
IanKennedy wrote:
Ivan_Only wrote: I am having this issue in Firefox, but not in IE
I have made no changes to any of the Connection settings

The Default Values for Firefox are 12 connections and 22 persistent.

There are a few problems I see with this "fix"

1. The change is global, so it affects your connection to ANY site
2. I have this problem with NO other site

Since I am unwilling to change any setting for a single site, even though this is an awesome site, I will simply have to view it in IE.
If you are seeing this issue then you or someone else has changed the settings on your computer. This is easy to confirm. Simply follow the instructions for changing the settings, and see what the numbers are. If they are higher than standard they you are causing issues for people on every site you visit, not just ours. You are in effect hogging resources meant for other users. Our server now prevents that from taking place so you have no choice to misbehave on our system. What you do with other servers is not our problem.

The settings for IE are completely separate from those for Firefox so it's quite possible to see the issue with one browser and not the other, in fact that is a major indicator that these settings have actually been changed. Looking at the numbers you give 12 and 22, these are massively high compared with the default values for the software. The defaults are 2 and 4 respectively. Having you settings 5 to 6 times higher than the standard value is causing issues for other users of every system you visit. You are seeing problems with us simply because we have chosen to prevent that unfair behavour. You will find that more and more sites will switch to blocking this over time.
Ya, my bad. I never changed these items since my last install of Firefox, however DownThemAll, a add on for Firefox, must have changed them. And of course I only realized this AFTER I hit Submit.

Now...if I could only find a way to remove this foot from my mouth.

No problem...

BTW, Awesome site, I have been looking at it for years!

Thanks
Ian

Post by **Nutso** » Thu Apr 24, 2008 5:59 am

Hi. I was running Firefox with the Fasterfox plugin. I hadn't been able to see the pictures or the headers in such a long time. I can't recall when I first had this problem. It just made perusing the site really difficult.

Thanks for the fix IanKennedy. It's so great to be able to once again view this site without any problems.

Post by **IanKennedy** » Thu Apr 24, 2008 10:49 am

Nutso wrote:Hi. I was running Firefox with the Fasterfox plugin. I hadn't been able to see the pictures or the headers in such a long time. I can't recall when I first had this problem. It just made perusing the site really difficult.

Thanks for the fix IanKennedy. It's so great to be able to once again view this site without any problems.

No problem. All part of the service.