Hi Michael

I've been quite frustrated with the speed on flyertalk, and I have alot of experience with these types of problems, so I hope I can help you.

The first thing: there are a number of tools which can monitor the responsiveness of a connection and the responsiveness of the server (page server and/or DB) and show you where there's a problem. Many of these tools are free or part of the standard hosting software. You should get these tools and install them... so at least then when you have problems you wont sit wondering where the problem is. Most packages even provide alerting, so you know right away when a problem appears.

Second, it seems obvious now that the main problem is with the server being overloaded (not bandwidth).
There are basically four reasons why this could happen:
- processor overload
- not enough RAM (given the corruption occuring, this seems a likely cause)
- poor configuration (cache, etc)
- unnecessary load (having programs running that dont need to be running, or trojans/viruses taking resources).

For each one there are a number of solutions.

The easiest and fastest solution is probably to add more RAM and processors to your server, assuming it is upgradeable. This is not nearly as expensive as you might imagine, especially if you buy the components on e-bay. For $500 you might be able to solve all your problems today. If you have questions about what you might need, please tell me the configuration of your server and I'll try to help. Another solution is to change the server altogether. You might even want to consider moving Flyertalk to a 3rd party hosting center utilizing a cluster. Granted all this costs money, but you make money from banners and when users cannot get onto flyertalk, you are losing that revenue, so it also costs you money not to fix these problems.

Poor configuration is more difficult to fix because you should know how to tune the server. You can hire somebody to do this, but unless it is really badly tuned or you have an inhouse person who knows how to tune the server, it is often cheaper to just overcome this problem by throwing hardware upgrades at it.

Unnecessary load I have seen many times, and it is mainly a result of bad practices. If you are running an NT server make sure of the following: run a virus checker to ensure that there is no virus or trojan hogging resources. Shut down any services you absolutely dont need. Make sure you ALWAYS logout (not just lock the console) after working, as an open console (even locked) uses resources. If you are running Unix/Solaris/SunOS tell me and I can give you other advice.

Hope this helps.

Ron Lewin