Notes on Site Slowness
We're aware that there has been some site drag the last few days. We believe we know what's causing the drag, and we're working to clear the bottle neck. It may take us a day or so to pin it all down and clear the pipes... but we're working on it. Just wanted you to know. Thanks for loving us through our growing pains!
Posted by josh 
on May 08, 2007 in News | 52 comments
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JBVisions on May 08, 2007
PIPES! You're using pipes! Not a wonder you have problems, have you tried using cables instead?
josh
on May 08, 2007
Don't you know? The interwebs is nothing but a bunch of pipes and tubes!
Stratification on May 08, 2007
Good to hear that you're getting it nailed down. I'm sure it's causing more headaches on your end than on ours.
tamashii on May 08, 2007
get bigger trucks.
computersnob on May 08, 2007
great!
stacye on May 08, 2007
"The Internet is not something you just dump something on. It’s not a big truck. It’s a series of tubes!" -Senator Ted Stevens :)
justG on May 08, 2007
Haven't noticed (guess I've been lucky) except for one section of the site, but thanks for looking into it. =)
davethegr8 on May 08, 2007
Why don't you flush it with drano and a lot of water?
JBVisions on May 08, 2007
I think they have been, Somebody tell them they're not literally pipes. ;-)
MacManX on May 08, 2007
"Why don't you flush it with drano and a lot of water?" ~ davethegr8
Because if Drano can't clear the clog in your pipes, it actually solidifies around the clog, leaving you with a far worse situation. I learned the hard way after four bottles of Drano led to a $500 plumbing bill. If it's a tough clog, call a plumber.
This has been your Public Service Announcement for today.
dyar on May 08, 2007
Everytime is slows to a crawl I think whoo hooo a new set is being released.
josh
on May 08, 2007
FWIW — we just temporarily removed friends from the Delivery pages. That seems to be the major bottleneck. We're running some tests, making some changes, and we'll be adding that back once we have a fix in place. Thanks for your understanding in the interim.
Jahnoth
on May 08, 2007
Eesh. Reminds me. I need to go home and clean the pipe trap in my bathroom sink.
Hmm... another icon set idea. Plumbing!
signsintime on May 08, 2007
So what you are saying, Josh, is that it's our friends who are clogging up the drains?? Some friends!
bcarneiro on May 08, 2007
Still love you! er... I mean, the buffet!
anti on May 08, 2007
I have the exact same problem here at the house. We never have people over, the plumbing just can't take it. Love that country life!
davethegr8 on May 08, 2007
I hate it when my friends clog up my tubes.
It seems like those queries shouldn't be too expensive. You must have a crazy db design.
josh
on May 08, 2007
@davethegr8 — Our Deliveries model is actually quite a bit more complicated — and at the same time brilliant — than one might think.
mattsnowboard on May 08, 2007
Internet is a series of tubes!
Just shoot some lotto balls through to unclog it.
debbye on May 08, 2007
i was just @a page thanking a girl for friending me, no big deal!
it was taking forever to post [ i only clicked once ] so i figured that i would reboot to see if it would help. i came back & my message was posted no less than 10 times! thanx for installing the little trash icons. maybe i deleated them before she saw!!!
they do have a new procuct for this problem - Imodium I-B
LoopyMind on May 09, 2007
as long as it's not a pipe-dream ;)
Steax on May 09, 2007
No wonder I had trouble yesterday.
And FYI, they don't use pipes nor the so-called cables. They're really a bunch of underwater high-memory monkeys that transfer information in binary format on their ten thousand fingers. As for land-based methods, they use a pair of cans and string for each connection (shoestring for broadband).
Don't let them fool you!
opello on May 09, 2007
IP-over-Pidgeon
mcd on May 09, 2007
Geez... all this tech talk makes me want to upgrade my hand-crank modem. I've got my eye on that sweet hamster-in-a-wheel modem. It's 600 baud!
anti on May 09, 2007
I thought it was a plot to make the game more challenging. Hurry and deliver while the site is up - NOOOo
brandy on May 09, 2007
maybe this has something to do with why my avatar has mysteriously disappeared?
smalltide on May 09, 2007
What's this "internet" everyone keeps going on about?
Betty on May 09, 2007
w.w.what?
anti on May 09, 2007
It is the World Wide Wait.
Luckybeitia on May 09, 2007
Hehe.
robbyrice on May 09, 2007
I'm sorry to say guys, but some of the comments on here were really lame :o) I enjoyed reading them and got a couple of laughs, but come on, were IconBuffet members, can't we be more serious :o)
khursten on May 09, 2007
Thanks for solving it up guys. Good Lucky! And yeah, we still lurve you~ <3
bcarneiro on May 09, 2007
@ robbyrice: I disagree. I think the comments are pretty hilarious. And who said we have to be serious about anything in the buffet?
JBVisions on May 10, 2007
There is little enough opportunity in this world to have a good laugh, what's nice about this place is that you can. So many of the other IT related fora are deadly serious and full of the "don't put a foot wrong, post here, not there" types that this place makes a refreshing change.
Also far less intimidating for the non-techies amongst us don't you think?
Jen on May 10, 2007
Hey wow! The friends are back on the icon pages! :D ...but its showing friends that also have the set pending acceptance. Can that be adjusted?
iconmaster on May 10, 2007
We've made some big optimizations to several previously-laggy database queries, and things seem to be clipping along nicely now. We'll naturally continue to keep an eye on performance as the site grows.
tamashii on May 10, 2007
Something just hiccuped - I had a single click of the Post Comment button turn into 6 posts.
JBVisions on May 10, 2007
I was trying to get in to read a post on here and it just sat there. After 3 or 4 minutes I killed it. Might just be my connection though. The kids are all home from school and it's raining.
tamashii on May 10, 2007
this site is really crawling for me now; and stuff either doesn't happen or takes forever to happen.
dyar on May 10, 2007
what tamashii said
aaroncampbell on May 10, 2007
Me too, and the other option is it happens over and over (when you *think* nothing is happening). I've made plenty of multiple posts that I've had to delete, as well as sending multiple deliveries (something that you shouldn't even be able to do).
tamashii on May 10, 2007
btw: it took me more than a day to receive the email notification that etherbrian sent me Cupertino Collect Call.
And over an hour for the notification that Stratification sent me Amsterdam Arctic.
aaroncampbell on May 10, 2007
I've had arctic for a while now, even sent it to a few people, had it rejected by one, and sent it off again...I still don't have the E-Mail that says I got that delivery.
iconmaster on May 10, 2007
email notifications are sometimes deliberately delayed.
tamashii on May 10, 2007
Why? It’s kewl if that’s the case, I would just like to know the rationale behind delaying a simple notification.
iconmaster on May 10, 2007
In order to spread out the server-pounding that a new release tends to bring.
tamashii on May 10, 2007
That's a damn good reason.
dyar on May 10, 2007
5 minutes to load this page. From experience on another board I moderate, IB will begin losing members if this continues. Perhaps its better to have a splash page that the site is undergoing maintenance. Reboot the servers and if that doesn't help take it down until it's fixed. Sorry for a negative post but frustration is setting in.
Shpigford on May 10, 2007
How are you guys using pipes? I think that's the issue. Tubes are the transfer method of choice around the internet.
I figured you guys knew that. Looks like somebody is totally noob! :)
aaroncampbell on May 10, 2007
I have to agree with dyar. In my experience, you will start losing people soon. I feel like I get timeouts nearly as often as I get pages.
Are you on a dedicated server at CIHost? Or do you colocate?
iconmaster on May 10, 2007
We're on a dedicated server.
Unfortunately, we had to undo one of our optimizations due to some inaccurate calculations it was causing. We're going to keep working on another way to get that query sped up. Thanks for bearing with.
jmnovak on May 10, 2007
I notice that performance seems to be worst in the first 10 minutes or so past the hour... if I wait until a quarter past or later, updates are usually not bad. FWIW...