Website not responding sporadically

[Roberta]

I have had problems with Orchidboard in past, but it has mostly been pretty stable lately.

[Ray]

Originally Posted by katsucats

I know that http has a timeout period, but if there is one slow server, then it would be slow on repeated attempts.

Not necessarily.

If the path was always A>B>C>D>E>F, and you were the only user, then the response-and-send times would be more or less the same. But if any one of them (or a combination) was getting hammered with lots of requests one minute and none the next, that lag would be different on subsequent tries.

For example, I just ran a trace from me to here, and the 11 jumps showed a total latency of about 240ms. I ran it a second time though the same pathway, and it came out as 445ms.

Plus, when you log in another time, the path might be A>B>D>G>H>I>F

[katsucats]

Ray, what you say might be true if it was random. However, if it's always the case that the first visit is slow, then the probability of it would be exceedingly low. It would mean that by chance only the very first request -- every day, for example -- passes through a problematic server, and none of the other requests do in some period after the first.

There's one of several possibilities. If the server before the problem server recognizes that it's timing out, then it would determine another path, and the slowness would not come back the second day, since an alternate path has been established.

If there is a problematic path that is randomly established, then I should get timeouts randomly while I scroll through a site, and not merely the first time I click through on a Google link (and none of the others).

That's the kind of situation I'm describing. Maybe you're describing something else.

[SouthPark]

It is maybe a year since the '503' thing was being seen a bit. I can confirm from my side - that I haven't seen it at all this year in 2021 on OrchidBoard.

[Ray]

Katsucats, you might be right, but your browser timing out and the http: 503 error are different entities.

The 503 says the website data server has too many requests for its configuration to handle.

A browser time out simply means the data has not reached you in an “acceptable” time, where “acceptable” is defined by the browser settings.

[Mr.Fakename]

Originally Posted by katsucats

I know that http has a timeout period, but if there is one slow server, then it would be slow on repeated attempts. I don't recall any problem with orchidboard, but with andysorchids or aos.org, often it's the first attempt and the first attempt only that times out.

The way you describe your issue makes me think you might have a problem with the way your browser caches the data.

What browser/version are you using, and have you cleared the cache recently?

[Roberta]

Originally Posted by Mr.Fakename

The way you describe your issue makes me think you might have a problem with the way your browser caches the data.

What browser/version are you using, and have you cleared the cache recently?

It may also be ISP routing... For a long while I was having difficulty getting to some sites (Orchidboard usually OK, New York Times often couldn't at times) I could verify that it was Spectrum not the site because I could get there with my phone on the Verizon network. Nobody at Spectrum was interested in listening... Better lately (performance, not Spectrum listening to me).