[GreenMtnMan]

I was invited to participate here by Chief (Thanks, Chief!) but am finding that TF is too slow to be usable for me. I timed a refresh of the TF home page and it took 5 minutes and 10 seconds! Posting and reading articles is also extremely slow. I've tried at various times of the day and the performance doesn't seem to vary much from one time to another.

You could blame my system but I get the same slow performance on three windows machines (xp, w2k and NT4), a linux box, and a QNX box. Maybe I'm in a black hole or something, but I don't generally have this poor of performance on other sites. My guess is that there are a lot more graphics here, and they all take a LONG time to download.

I'm not trying to flame anybody, this looks like a great up-and-coming forum and has some great features for those with broadband access, but as it stands it's not really usable for me at this time.

I'm hoping these comments are taken as constructive criticism since that is what is intended. If it is too slow for me, perhaps it is too slow for others as well.

 

[Live Oak]

Hey Ken, I appreciate your efforts and support buddy. Andy is reconfiguring the home page screen menu so you can go directly to each section without having to wait for everything else to download. Hopefully this will substantially reduce the amount of waitng. I typically just go right to the "get it" button and click on the days posts and they come right up. Hope you won't give up on us and trying the new home page menu when Andy gets it back up again.

 

[jodyand]

GreenMtnMan I think you need to get in touch with your phone company you must a problem with your phone line. I have use this forum on dial up and DSL and on dial up it didn't take but at most 30 seconds to load. Your phone lines must have a problem I'm sorry to here it but i haven't heard anyone else say it takes 5 Min's to load.
Jody

 

[guest2]

I'm on dial up also and it loads pretty quick, don't have any problems or a noticable difference between this and any other site.

 

[GreenMtnMan]

As I said I don't have problems with other sites. Not TBN (when I used to go there), not TractorPoint (on there everyday), and not TractorImplement. Just this one. I don't think analog phone lines are that selective. It's entirely possible I am getting a lousy route to TF (10 hops, some of which are slow) but that's not phone lines.

 

[farmallmaniac]

whats TBN and tractorpoint, tractorimplement?

 

[ducati996]

GreenMtnMan,

Plenty of sites to test your broadband connection, all you have to do is ask....In this case I'm just giving it to you..
There are tweaks to increase your packets and data throughput..
for example my cable modem uploads 1.5 Mbps and downloads up to 3 Mbps...you should know your upload and download speeds for DSL I would assume?

I go to all those sites you mentioned except implements and TP is slow because its a very limited bandwidth site..TBN and here are fast all the time...its you buddy sorry to say

Duc

www.dslreports.com

www.grc.com

www.cablenut.com

www.speedguide.com

 

[Chris]

Well, your hop counts are excessive. You seem to possess a decent understanding of the technical side of things (Linux, QNS and hop counts) but perhaps it is truly something else like a bad BGP core device between us somewhere out of my control.
Our redundant Sun servers are on private OC-12 redundant links with 2 different providers. I know that if most other 56k'ers are able to surf without your excessive delays, then it must be something related to the path chosen by your ISP, your CPE side devices, or something else. This site has been optimized for speed numerous times with changes to amounts of queries, streamlining of code in the forum software, etc.

Well, hope you figure it out. Good to have you here.

Andy

 

[ducati996]

Originally posted by admin

Our redundant Sun servers are on private OC-12 redundant links with 2 different providers.

Andy

Thats some serious pipe you have there !! Not even the busiest porn sites or Dss sites in there prime were ever close to that need...These are just examples that are known for high bandwidth requirements...

If you ever have a need for pricing , availability, or need to hopefully save money, I would be happy to quote you...
I've worked for some of the largest ISP providers and I'm still invloved as an agent for most, direct for some....NPAxx for both ends, is all I need..

Anyway hopefully this guy gets his connection working...

Duc

 

[GreenMtnMan]

Ducati, sorry if I wasn't clear. I'm on a slow dial-up. 26.4kbs is a good connection for me. There is no broadband where we live.

Andy, after the original post I contacted my ISP about the high hop count and slow hops. They found that the segment between Seattle and Dallas was dropping packets, which is outside control of either of us. If they get this rerouted I'll try again.

 

[Live Oak]

You guys are talking Greek to me but I sure hope you can work something out and be a regular poster here Ken.

 

[guest]

what is a hop count?

 

[Stewart]

Being too slow is not much fun. Weh we were in SW Oklahoma all they had was dial-up and 28800 was as good as it got. You could get satalite but it was still pricy!

What is hop count? Sounds like what you do when you jump rope.

 

[Chipmaker]

Well I still have a dial up as well, and on a good day which is extremely rare I may get a 26xxx connection but most of the time I get 21600 or lower, and I really don;t have a problem with most any site except when it comes to downloading large files it may take some time. I find this site for the most part loads pretty quick even compared to some sites that do not have graphics.

I live in the boondocks so thats a big part of my slow connect speeds. But what gets me is that tthe local phone company ran two fiber optic lines, and the major phone company Southern Bell ran a fiber optics line right down the front of my property line (2 ingrond lines one above) to feed a stinking inducstrial park they are building u the road about a mile away and they will not hook anyone up to it except the industrial park folks. When it gets rainy I get nothing but noise on my lines and then I get 14000 connect speeds most of the rainy season.

 

[Chris]

every time that you sent packets from one networking device (router inside your network or across the Internet) it has to "hop around" to find the next "best" link or hop to get your request from your PC to your ISPs edge router, then its core router, then perhaps its remote ONS site then to the nearest Internet backbone router, then it hops along to the next preferred path site --- it basically relies upon a "map" that tells it the best path as far as latency, utilization and cost to make that jump. It is like a map of the USA with interstates and backroads. Pretty much the same principle that Mapquest uses to derive the "best, shortest or most direct" drive to your destination. Each time you would have to turn off one road to either a highway, country lane or avenue, it would be considered a "hop" in network engineering terms.

This is a very laymens response --- so I apologize, but considering the audience... HAHAHAHAHA

Hope that helps...

You can test it by doing a tracert in dos/win or a traceroute unix/linux. i.e. ----
c:> tracert www.tractorforum.com

it will show you the hops from your PC, to your firewall or DSL/CM router if applicable to your ISP, then its internal networking router edge ports, then to the Internet and the paths to get it here. How fun....

Andy

 

[GreenMtnMan]

This is what my ISP says:

>That certainly is odd. The tractorforum site is blazingly fast from
>here, but is actually pretty darn slow on our office dialup >connection. My guess is that all those lovely, full-color images of >tractors are a little too much to reliably pull through a dialup >connection.
>
>You might want to try disabling images for browsing that site to >see if that improves your performance. In Internet Explorer, >that option is found in Tools--->Internet Options --->Advanced. >It's labeled "Show Pictures" under the Multimedia section.

This supports my original contention. I did some testing this morning with a full refresh of the TF home page, with images disabled it was 19 seconds, with images enabled it was 5 minutes 17 seconds.

 

[MowHoward2210]

Andy,

Here is the traceroute from my computer (mostly Greek to me). I am on an ADSL line.
Traceroute has started ...

traceroute to tractorforum.com (69.56.172.194), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 * * *
2 clmamocobr6.clmamocoro2.centurytel.net (64.91.3.50) 29.004 ms 54.707 ms 83.057 ms
3 clmamocoro2.clmamocoro1.centurytel.net (64.91.3.33) 102.338 ms 25.095 ms 23.444 ms
4 clmamocoro1.clmamocoro1.centurytel.net (64.91.3.34) 24.395 ms 24.176 ms 24.124 ms
5 dc2-h92.bgtmo.ip.att.net (12.125.64.49) 51.895 ms 64.039 ms 26.373 ms
6 gbr5-p50.sl9mo.ip.att.net (12.123.24.122) 27.902 ms 59.567 ms 26.749 ms
7 tbr2-p013501.sl9mo.ip.att.net (12.122.11.121) 59.285 ms 70.349 ms 31.662 ms
8 tbr2-cl7.cgcil.ip.att.net (12.122.10.45) 68.128 ms 34.566 ms 67.62 ms
9 ggr2-p3120.cgcil.ip.att.net (12.123.6.69) 38.265 ms 34.067 ms 55.766 ms
10 so-1-1-0.br6.chi2.alter.net (204.255.174.9) 72.313 ms 35.908 ms 40.342 ms
11 0.so-5-3-0.xl2.chi2.alter.net (152.63.64.58) 70.764 ms 82.544 ms 34.824 ms
12 0.so-0-0-0.tl2.chi2.alter.net (152.63.68.89) 59.129 ms 34.675 ms 34.827 ms
13 0.so-5-2-0.tl2.dfw9.alter.net (152.63.1.149) 49.749 ms 48.755 ms 49.085 ms
14 0.so-7-0-0.cl2.dfw13.alter.net (152.63.103.222) 49.244 ms 49.044 ms 50.727 ms
15 pos7-0.gw1.dfw13.alter.net (152.63.103.89) 72.814 ms 50.051 ms 50.59 ms
16 theplanet-gw.customer.alter.net (157.130.143.226) 92.751 ms 53.528 ms 49.695 ms
17 car2-1-v1.dllstx2.theplanet.com (12.96.160.13) 64.309 ms 80.683 ms 49.477 ms
18 69-56-172-194.theplanet.com (69.56.172.194) 51.121 ms 49.242 ms 61.249 ms

I have browsed this site from my parents dialup connection, and it seemed normal for dialup.

Just thought I'd let everyone see an example.

 

[jbetts13]

l have my slow days and some day the dam thing will boot it self:cpu: :cpu: :cpu:

 

[Live Oak]

I learned a thing or two on this thread. Had no idea you could disable images like that. So can get good speed at least without the images. No smiley faces for you!

 

[guest]

when i tried that trace.. mine looked sort of like yours mowhoward except it timed out after 11 on...

not sure what that means but im on cable so speed is pretty good.