Anyone else having speed problems?
 

Well, speed on FT that is http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

I've asked a couple of friends who don't seem to be having difficulty, but for 2-3 days now, my access time, time loading forums, opening threads, etc. is waaaaaaaaaaaaay slow. I can get to other sites zippedy do dah - so I don't think it's my internet provider. Maybe a NAP problem between my ISP and FT's? Anyone know of anything major?

OK - I get it - you have to post here to fix it! I swear - I had no sooner hit "submit" than the problem was righted! Go figure - something came back on line..

[This message has been edited by svpii (edited 11-29-2001).]

no probelm during the last 24 hours - and I posted not here (but all over the place ...).

Seems ok for me!

It's like taking your kids to the doctor - as soon as you register and sit down, they get better!

Or taking your car in for service. The moment you turn into the drive, it invariably stops doing whatever it was that caused you to bring it in.

Absolutely!! An even better example!

I am having major speed problems and stalls and crashes SINCE the site came back lastnight...in netscape 4.76 on a mac G4 and on my IMAC

It was fine for me until the last couple of hours.. painfully slow to load right now.

It does appear significantly slower than last week to me. I just checked my through-put and I'm currently surfing at 162K.

It looks like our colocation center is experiencing some routing problems. I have a call in to them to resolve the problem. Thanks for the feedback.

John

Thanks John... it's very slow right now.

Still terribly slow.

Yeah but the Internet in general is terribly slow today.

Anybody know why?

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum50/HTML/009293.html

still slow for me...

Looks like it's back to normal speed now. Hope it holds up during the day tomorrow.

Have not had any problems the last few days untill this morning. Things have gotten really slow. I'm running on cable modem if that means anything (no trouble with other web sites).

CS

Absolutly crawling at a snail's pace.

I havne't posted in 2 days as it's too slow to load - times out. Could it be the co-lo servers have been hit by the worm?

I too was super slow for several days - to the point where I just didn't bother - took so long I hit STOP and moved on.

This morning, it's flying! Whatever was broke is now apparently fixed.

FT had maintenace on the last weekend and was offline for nearly two days. This was announced with a note at the top of each page for some days.

Since the server is online again on Sunday, the speed is MUCH higher than before (I have a DSL connection).

I am on cable modem, no known problems with any other site. At least at the times I have tried (2 or 3 times a day), the speed has been a virtual crawl, ever since the upgrade last weekend. At 10:35 a.m. Pacific time it took more than a minute for this forum (Technical Support) to load.

No geek delusions or geek speculation here, as I don't speak techno. I just know that ever since last weekend's shutdown, with a very few short-lived exceptions, the board has been unusually slow.

32 seconds to open this thread with DSL.

I am on 4meg ADSL here in Vancouver. Waiting for forums or the main page to load has become a complete waste of time.

Whatever upgrade you guys did over the weekend....uhm....was backwards.

Dorian

I hate to complain, but.........

At least I see the problem has been made known.

Has been slow for two days now for me.

This is as painfully slow as FT has ever been. Seems the new servers have done nothing to improve response. If anything, we are back to the bad old days of Wednesday, Thursday, Friday slowdowns due to high demand by other clients on the same servers. Where did you move to, and from where? What was the promise made, because it has certainly not been kept.

Ditto

Agree there must be something wrong with the new servers. I am using a cable modem and this site is extremely slow in loading threads and opening threads- much worse than the old server ever was. All other sites are zipping right along.

Ditto for me... cable modem fast everywhere but here.

If you don't know what the promise made was, how do you know it wasn't kept?

There were no promises made, only an attempt by us to improve on the performance of this free service by purchasing a different server to host FT on. Obviously, we have more homework to do at this end, and we're doing it, as well as keeping up on our commitments to our other non-FT projects.

For those of you that seem to be so offended at our attempts to improve on a high-maintenance/cost service we provide to the public for free, I would suggest either 1) hanging on and putting up with the slow days while we work out the server problems or
2) leaving. You're always welcome to come back when you want to get more free information on how to maximize your awards, or hang out with the friends you've made here.

I am most offended by the language Dan is using here, and suggest that employees do not treat their clients, particularly loyal ones, in this fashion.

True, this is a free service. But it is only as good as the contributions freely made by the members of this community who visit it. And hundreds of us contribute many hours to Flyer Talk, and were we paid our normal professional fees, our "subscriptions" would be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars collectively.

I can understand how Dan feels being under the gun with this change not working out well. But I do suggest he refrain from shooting the messengers or we may well leave FlyerTalk...

I simply made a statement about the poor performance experienced. For reference, I contextualized it with previous slowdowns we have experienced over the years.

When changes are made, they are done for a reason. If a salesman or techie persuaded Randy that this was a better route to take, then that implied a promise of improvement and a rationale for taking the decision to move servers. All I have posted was a question as to whether you at FT were mislead, and might have recourse.

Remember, very little has been explained to us, except that you were doing something with your servers last weekend to improve things. Well, they have not been improved. Perhaps if you were to better explain what occured, and why there is this problem, we would be a bit more understanding.

I won't ask for an apology for Dan's remark to me, but do hope he realizes a community is only as strong as those who participate in it. If he is asking those of us who contribute to leave, that community is certain to fall into decline and perish. I am sure that is not what Randy wants to see happen, but if this attitude around certain quarters at The House of Miles does not change, that may well be the consequence.

[This message has been edited by Shareholder (edited 12-06-2001).]

I agree with Shareholder. I only post to this forum, and to this thread, because I assume that the FT staff wants to know when things are not operating smoothly.

For what it's worth, I've not really been affected by speed problems with FT, either over a modem connection or the T1 at work. Don't know if being based in Europe has anything to do with it...

House of Cards... cute. How quickly we resort to name calling... http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

Share, I do you an apology, based on my choice of words, although not on my intention. As I said earlier, we made a decision to move servers, thought it would be a performance increase, based on results from another server move, and as it turned out, things aren't nearly as smooth as we would have expected. As John posted earlier in this thread, we're aware of the slowdowns, and he's been on the phone with our hosting company for the last two days, in addition to performing his other duties around the company. I'm sorry if my post came out too rough; I'm not a diplomat, just a member of the team that's trying to keep FT usable and growing.

When we do find out what happened, as with problems in the past, we usually do post it in tech support.

Cactus, we do want to know when things aren't working correctly. But it wears thin when we're told about the problem, have replied in acknowledgement, and still the conga line grows and gets more colorful. There is nothing productive in being the 20th post to tell us it's slow, after we've already posted that we're looking into it. And there is nothing productive in making assumptions on the promises made here; If you have a tech issue, please post it, but leave the conspiracy theories to The Buzz, or send us an email.

As we've mentioned numerous times in the past; we're a very small team, working under a tight budget, and trying to provide good service to a product that no one here has paid for, while balancing our time on other products that people ARE paying for. For those of you that have been here for a while, and have experienced the slowdowns like we're going through now, you also remember that we've overcome those problems eventually. We'll get this worked out, hopefully soon, since we can't work very well on the sites if they're slow, just as you can't browse them when they're slow.

Of course a good community is based on user support and input, and we all understand there wouldn't be nearly as large a FlyerTalk without the amount we've received over the years. And we appreciate it. That's why we've supported FT events, brought in guest speakers and great promotions, given out seats for Freddie Awards and other appreciative items we've done over the years. All at no cost to any FlyerTalker. So, like I've said earlier, if you'll stick around a little longer, you'll see that we'll get FT back up to a comfortable speed.

Wow...do I ever echo Shareholder's comments!

Free? Big deal. FT's choice, not ours.

No need to come out swinging Dan. Would have been better to just post "Working on it."

Dorian

Well, there's free and there's no-fee. Certainly we can come and participate for no fee.

But we get to read banner ads, both for FT products which presumably produce a profit, and for others, which presumably produce revenue of some kind.

And while you provide the platform, almost all the content is provided by us!

andrew

FlyerTalk also represents a unique viewpoint into the frequent traveller market. Don't underestimate the value of that resource.

FewMiles..

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We did; actually John did... apparently that wasn't clear enough though.

As I said before, sorry for being hotheaded, but my point is still the same; we're working on the problem with the resources we have available.

Dan, in my last role as VP Operations of a dotcom, I used to joke that "if it weren't for these **** customers, we could get something done." But gosh, I never said that to them!

I realize you don't know me and don't give a rat's ... what I think, but since this is a free venue, I'm gonna talk anyway http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

FewMiles touched on the right way to look at this "free service". Because of the high volume of users, and the quality of information they provide, FT is really akin to your cost of goods sold for the other revenue generating divisions. Precisely because of the traffic and content we provide, your other operations have both more credibility and muscle.

If you resent the fact that you have to maintain a free service, then change that. But FT set the bar. FT provided the service, FT made the decision to make it free, FT made the decision to suggest that performance was going to be better. So FT can hardly get defensive because the users it asked to come are complaining about performance.

There are a lot of us here with experience in web-based ventures, databases, middleware, hardware, etc. We are curious because we will understand what you tell us. And when we get answers like "it's not working like we thought it would", it's in our professional nature to ask more questions.

So I'm sorry if you had a bad day or week. But don't look at us as less than valued customers because we follow FT's established policies. You want we should send you a check??

edited to correct typo..

[This message has been edited by svpii (edited 12-06-2001).]

This credibility is why this site will even be stronger and more "valuable" in the future. There is a reservations tab at the top.....we all know how lucrative a GOOD travel site can be. And once a certain number of REGISTERED members are on the books and a certain number of guaranteed VISITORS come to the site, advertising costs to sponsors go up and the site can even be sold for lots of money. Word of mouth and publicity keeps this site number one and negative things can make a company slide faster than good ones making a company go up.