Slow Forum

[Howard Acheson]

Is it just me or is the forum having a problem? It's taking 20-30 seconds for the forum to react to all activites.

I am connecting with other forums at my normal speed and have no indication of trouble at my end? Seems to have begun to happen in the past 7-10 days.

 

[manfre]

Ever since the upgrade, the forum feels faster to me, but that might be due to the better inline editor.

 

[ehpoole]

Howard,

Unfortunately this behavior is not unexpected as your ISP has a serious fault on their end. Namely, their DNS servers are failing to reverse-resolve your IP address (67.209.31.154 was last used, above 67.209.15.255 they have a huge resolution hole), which is not acceptable internet behavior. Your delay is equal to the failure timeout for DNS resolution and because it always fails, our server retries the request with each connection to this site. Normally, a single request is issued by our server (which seldom takes more than 1-2 seconds) and our server will continue to cache (remember) that answer for however many minutes, hours, or days your ISP's DNS server instructs our server to do so.

This is an issue that your ISP needs to correct at their end so that their IP blocks properly reverse-resolve. How they can not be aware of this condition is beyond me, in this day and age their is no excuse not to monitor such critical services as DNS so that issues are detected and corrected as soon as humanly possible.

The reason you do not notice this behavior everywhere on the Internet is because not all sites/servers perform reverse-resolution, while some that do may also implement negative-result caching (which is possible, but rarely done because it can cause other issues). We perform reverse-resolution as part of our routine security checks. Until this matter is resolved, there are some Internet sites that will outright refuse access to you (e.g. those requiring double resolution) and you may notice that some email servers refuse to accept/deliver your emails - you may either receive a delivery failure notice or the remote email server may simply, and unceremoniously, delete your message upon receipt.

Any how, the error should be simple enough for your ISP to fix promptly, and if they do not know how to then it is time to find a new ISP as this is literally an Internet-101 matter for any ISP!

When the matter is resolved (pardon the pun), your accesses to this site should resume at normal speed with a minimum of delay. On the other hand, if you should still experience such slow downs PLEASE let us know and we will investigate the matter further. In the meantime, please feel free to share this post with your ISP.

If you have any other questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me (or any other admin), we are happy to help out.

 

[Howard Acheson]

Ethan, I contacted my ISP Atlantic Telephone Membership Corp (ATMC) and they had me reboot my wireless router. That apparently fixed the problem. For this note, I was able to contact NC Woodworker immediately and every subsequent click was immediately responded to. So, I guess it's fixed. Thanks for your help.

Here is another issue:

When I scroll down to the bottom of any forum page I am seeing what looks to be "chat messages" going on. AFAIK I have never signed on for chats yet the page shows me as a participating or available for chats. How do I turn that off?

 

[SteveColes]

I'm glad that resolution was that simple.

As far as the chat, we are playing around with what chat software we want to provide. The one you are seeing does not seem to require signing in. I'm not sure whether that is good or bad We will be looking at least one other as soon we get a chance. We are sort of overloaded in terms of tasks and time. But we will get to it.

Ethan, I contacted my ISP Atlantic Telephone Membership Corp (ATMC) and they had me reboot my wireless router. That apparently fixed the problem. For this note, I was able to contact NC Woodworker immediately and every subsequent click was immediately responded to. So, I guess it's fixed. Thanks for your help.

Here is another issue:

When I scroll down to the bottom of any forum page I am seeing what looks to be "chat messages" going on. AFAIK I have never signed on for chats yet the page shows me as a participating or available for chats. How do I turn that off?

 

[ehpoole]

Howard,

The problem IS going to reappear for you in the future because your ISP still has not fixed THEIR DNS configuration error(s).

The reason the reboot of your router *appears* to have worked (and will work for the moment) is because the reboot forced it (your modem/router) to apply for a new DHCP lease (dynamically assigned IP address) which has, for the moment, resulted in you being assigned an IP address (209.188.49.244) that does reverse-resolve -- hence no delays. That you now have expected response times is proof-positive that my assessment was correct (not that I had any doubts).

However, at some point in the future your DHCP lease will expire and/or you will power off your cable/DSL router/modem which will result in you being assigned another random IP address from their pool of available IP addresses. The next time you get assigned an IP address that ranges from 67.209.16.0-67.209.31.255 the issue will reappear.

I would strongly encourage you to escalate this matter with your ISP so that they get it fixed as it will not only affect you again (in the future) but their other customers as well. Unfortunately, Tier 1 & 2 tech support personnel tend to consider a 'reboot' a fix for every problem. Sometimes it does fix the problem, but other times, such as now, it only appears to fix the problem.

This really is a very serious configuration matter from the ISP's perspective, so it is worth applying some real pressure on them to get it fixed (or, as I suggested, find a new ISP if the won't fix it). Under no circumstances allow them to suggest that YOU (or your router/modem) is the cause of this problem as it lies entirely at their end of things.

HTH

 

[ehpoole]

When I scroll down to the bottom of any forum page I am seeing what looks to be "chat messages" going on. AFAIK I have never signed on for chats yet the page shows me as a participating or available for chats. How do I turn that off?

For now, if you do not want the chat feature and do not intend to participate in such, you can go to your account Settings (click "Settings" in the top right-hand corner of your screen), then navigate to the "General Settings" screen (from left-hand sidebar) and the Chatbox settings are at the very top of the General Settings screen. They will show as defaulting to 'Off' but you will have to Save this setting before it takes effect as your current Chatbox state is undefined (which they system considers to be a 'Yes').