Signature area use - dragon images....

[WebSlave]

Originally when I set up this site, I decided to prohibit the use of graphics images within the signature area as well as the avatars in order to try to streamline the site and keep page loads for viewers reasonable by limiting the overhead that graphics images will incur. But maybe a year or two ago, I decided to relent on that restriction and allow graphics images in those areas with little or no stated restrictions.

However, lately I believe things are getting a bit carried away. Specifically I am referring to the dragon images that some people sport in within their signature areas. My understanding of the way they work is that they provide a link back to a website, which accepts the incoming image request, processes it, and then returns an image based on some sort of criteria related to hits and views. So, as anyone who thinks about this a bit can see, this provides quite a bit of overhead for any site that is having those images viewed on the webpages for their viewers. Of particular concern to me are external calls made to another server for each viewing of the image (and some members here have MULTIPLE dragon images within their signature area). Obviously that can affect the page loading for ANY viewer who views a page where a member has posted a reply and the signature area is visibly displaying those dragon images. I really don't want to be a wet blanket concerning people have some fun, however when it affects the performance of this site and quite probably incurs a penalty on the other viewers, then I am afraid that I must ask everyone to remove such images from their signature area immediately.

Sorry about this, but I really can't have something like this affecting the throughput of this site and causing a penalty for all viewers. I hope you understand my reasoning for this concern.

 

[Uroboros]

I've seen these and I think they're corny, but they don't inhibit page loads from what I can see.

The most delay I see from page loads is in some of the google ads and such that take a lot of time to load, mostly just waiting on the ad server to respond. googleads.g.doubleclick.net to be more specific.

 

[TattooLost]

I can see where they might be an issue. I've been using them, trying to see what kind I could get, mainly out of boredom. I'll get rid of 'em, no worries.

 

[WebSlave]

I've seen these and I think they're corny, but they don't inhibit page loads from what I can see.

The most delay I see from page loads is in some of the google ads and such that take a lot of time to load, mostly just waiting on the ad server to respond. googleads.g.doubleclick.net to be more specific.

Well, I sometimes will see red 'X's in place of the images which means the issuing host server is unable to send the image requested. So that obviously means some delay in displaying the entire page within the browser on my PC. Some browers WILL delay displaying the entire page until all images have been received.

As for google ads, they help pay the bills here. Regardless of the overhead, without some effective sources of revenue to support this site, it will not be here for long.

 

[TattooLost]

I know the dragon site has been having issues lately... think they have been getting ping flooded or some kind of attacks lately... so the dragons haven't been showing up hardly anyway... them trying to load is probably what causes a lot of the slowdown

But meh... they were cute, but i don't HAVE to have 'em.

 

[Wraith]

I know the dragon site has been having issues lately... think they have been getting ping flooded or some kind of attacks lately... so the dragons haven't been showing up hardly anyway... them trying to load is probably what causes a lot of the slowdown

But meh... they were cute, but i don't HAVE to have 'em.

No, the host provider essentially royally screwed up at the start of the month and refuse to admit they f'd up. By St. Patrick's day, the site came to a halt as access to the site was essentially impossible....still the company kept trying to pass off all kinds of lame excuses for the troubles. Any website who was using that hosting company is more or less F'd over until it all gets straightened out.

TJ ordered a temporary dedicated server with another company to move his dragon site over to until the other company gets their heads out of their asses. The new server should be up and running in a day or so (hopefully sooner than later).

This was a summary from a user that does know IT stuff (since I don't know if it is permissible to post a link to the that thread)....

The information about the problems observed in the last weeks is scattered in different threads : State of the Cave, Network Disruption, Site Optimization Thoughts and Tech talk to understand the site issue. Here is an attempt to summarize this information.

The facts

* This forum and the Dragon Cave are hosted on different servers connected to different networks. This explains why we can still use this forum while the cave is almost unusable.
* More than 80% of the connections to dragcave.net fail. The failure rate varies a bit during the day and may be close to 100% during some busy hours.
* The server itself is fine. According to TJ in this thread, "The server's CPU is 98% idle, disk IO is basically none, there is over 4GB of free RAM, and the server is only transmitting at about 1 mbps (Normal is 10+)."
* There was a RAM upgrade on the server but it is unrelated to the problems that we are observing since several days.
* Most of the traffic going to dragcave.net is blocked or dropped by the hosting company. Using traceroute from various locations shows almost no packet loss until the traffic reaches r1-dsnone-pdx.dsn1.net. This is a router of the hosting company, the last hop before TJ's server.
* If you search a bit for some information about that company (dsn1.net, directspace.net), you will find other customers complaining about the same problems and massive packet loss since the beginning of March and in particular in the last 10 days.


The discussion

What does this mean in non-technical terms ? The Dragon Cave server is fine but it cannot be reached because of severe networking problems at the hosting company.

Various explanations were given by the hosting company to their customers, including TJ : IP addresses blocked by the upstream provider (Cogent), DNS problems, firewall problems, etc. The customers were told that the technicians are trying to solve these problems, but for some of them this has been going on for several weeks without an appropriate solution.

The speculation

This is pure speculation so I may be wrong, but it looks like the hosting company has promised much more than they can deliver and now they are trying to do some damage control by limiting the traffic going to some of their customers.

None of the explanations given by the technicians is satisfactory from my point of view. All this talk about IP addresses, DNS or firewall doesn't match the problems that are observed and that can only be explained by massive packet losses. This can only be due the introduction of traffic shaping on their side or due to congestion in a severely under-dimensioned network.

What worries me the most is the behavior of the technicians and the poor explanations given. If they have introduced traffic shaping (limiting the bandwidth or the number of requests per second), they should have told TJ and their other customers about it beforehand. If they have other network problems such as an ongoing denial of service attack on another server on the same network, they should also have fixed that and probably informed their customers about the collateral damage. Changing firewall settings or bandwidth limits is something that can be done in a few minutes. If this requires a policy change and approval from higher management in the company, this should have been solved in a couple of days at most. Instead, what I saw in the messages that TJ and other customers have quoted doesn't inspire confidence at all.

This is even more speculative, but I fear that this is the same scam as what has been done by some small ISPs in the past : offer a deal that is too good to be true to get as many customers as possible. Once the network starts falling apart due to heavy load, introduce limits that were never announced in the initial deal. When the heavy users start complaining, drag your feet until these users stop using as much bandwidth as they were promised or until they move their server and their traffic elsewhere. Keep all the other users who are happy with much less traffic and end up paying for a service that they do not use fully, as well as those who are not so happy but who do not want to go through the trouble of relocating their servers. Rely on the fact that the heavy users will just give up and leave without claiming a breach of contract because it is too much trouble to escalate the complaint or sue the company. I hope that this is not the case here, because this would mean that the Dragon Cave wouldn't be back before several weeks.

 

[TattooLost]

ahhh, okay. well, i'll keep an eye on it then.

 

[Wraith]

ahhh, okay. well, i'll keep an eye on it then.

You know a host provider has totally FAILED when they respond to a customer update request with....

I'm just waiting for the dedi setup to be finished (It's almost done) and then I'll transfer the site over.

I also have a new host in mind, and it looks like I will definitely be switching, since after some trial and error my host finally responded with:

I don't know for sure what could be wrong here honestly.

 

[TattooLost]

you know, at one time when i was building my computer, I thought to myself "I should build a server and sell storage space". Now I'm glad I didn't, and this person probably is the same. hahaha