Getting request timeouts most of the day on www server. Makes it fun for testing proxy software (handle those random errors).

Once again, same here.

Is there a technician on duty?

Very slow for me since last night. Three attempts just to get signed in now.

bj-21.

FT via IE6 slowish but functional. Firefox, which I prefer to use, just hangs. Same story last few days. Anyone know why one works but not the other?

www.flyertalk.com at 64.78.185.85 seems to be timing out.

I'm accessing the web2 address with Firefox and it's working fine. The regular address hasn't worked for me consistently since yesterday.

Yup - varies between being very very slow - to getting a 505 error.

What's going on?

Most likely the primary web server (which I imagine is the IP address one, as well) is failing. FlyerTalk has two web servers which load-balance page requests between them. When one goes down, usually we get intermittent service - requests sent to the good server work, and requests sent to the bad server 404. So you can be working and then crash as your requests are bounced between the two boxes.

The IP address usually works because it bypasses the DNS (which is where the load-balancing is done, I believe) and goes directly to the server itself. But since whatever server the IP address I have is not responding, that must be the bum sever.

I am assuming web2 is now inundated with page requests, so that might explain why it is just sending text and omitting most of the graphics - lower bandwith needs. There might also be some bandwith throttling at the server-side to help.

And yes, there are FT staff, but sometimes they are offline during the weekend or they are busy trying to identify, isolate, and correct the problem and therefore do not have time to come on here and give us an update.

But rest assured they will fix it and provide a post-mortem of what caused the problem.

As users, the best thing we can do is try and be as specific as possible in reporting what we are seeing/experiencing to help the staff focus their efforts.

And to that end, I am on web2 right now and it downloaded all the graphics and speed remains fine, as it has all weekend.

Same here.

The last thing I want to do is sound negative here, or criticize the FT staff, but is there something that can be done to prevent downtime in the weekend? This isn't the first weekend FT has been down and I am sure 1000's of people are affected that don't know about the "web2 trick". It just seems a little weird that a board this large can have so much downtime and not be taken care of till monday mornings...

I guess it's like anything - have to balance cost vs. benefit.

Since most of us get this service for free (though I have done the "Premium" option so I am now a "paying member"), HOM may have decided 24x7 staffing is not cost-effective. While most of us would probably argue otherwise [ ], FT really isn't a "mission critical" application for HOM.

web2 is now dropping graphics again and web1 and IP are not responding, so it looks like the underlying issue(s) remain with us for the moment.

No web2 necessary here for me.

All is seemingly quite well thankfully.

Thanks again, in advance, for your assistance in trying to keep it that way for everyone.

Mark

24/7 monitoring doesn't require a staff member to be on duty, all you need is a simple monitoring service and a pager.

Is the site slow right now? It seems to be crawling slowly.