SCF Slow To Load At Times

As of late, SCF is slow to load at times. It may take up to 5 seconds before anything loads with the "waiting" message in status bar.

I use two different computers and see this behavior on both. I do not see it with other web sites.

I have gotten some calls and have also noticed some performance issues. I have not discussed them with Bobby but my opinion is that it may be related to the SCF search feature. As the database has grown over the last decade, I assume that the total number of posts is in the hundreds of thousands. Running a full text search on this number of posts on a SQL server is very 'expensive'. Looping through an index of this size sucks the resources right out of a server.

I also assume that this is why Bobby added the Google search feature to the SCF search page; it off loads the search burden from the SCF server and on to the Google server. Throwing a large amount of money on a new server, perhaps splitting it across multiple servers, would greatly help.

So my theory is that when another user(s) leans hard on the SCF search feature, it is impacting the rest of the server performance. Perhaps Bobby will weight in later today and correct my assumptions if they are wrong.
Don

Don is exactly right. Searches and subscriptions are the most taxing things on the site.

With that said... 95% of the time my pages are output in .3 seconds or less.

In the last week I also have been experiencing slow load times and even timeouts just trying to a page up (not doing a search) Trace routes don't show abnormal delay so its something with the server.

Or are you saying its slow because I try to get a page at the same moment the server is doing a search for someone else?

PS: It took over a minute to get to load this page to reply but the first reply there was no delay. Maybe look at throttling the cpu for the search process?

Don't worry about loading time, I can't control that. Look at the time at the bottom of the page.

It took 52.2 seconds to lick this stamp.

I have no trouble - it took .44 seconds to lick this stamp!

Peter

It's a sporadic issue. Most of the time its fine for me. I know if you click on a username that has a higher likelihood of a slow response - but even that is speedy at the moment.

If you're using that time as telemetry it is invalid data.

Got interesting result here. How are you calculating the seconds to lick the stamp?

I tried doing a search - which just ran for a very long delay so then I tried to open a post in another tab to read while I waited and it too was taking forever. What seemed like approaching the 2 minute mark, both pages finished loading at the same time. I went to look at the times so I could post them here:

The search page was a white page and in red it said "Sorry, there was an error processing this page." (no time listed)

And the other page? It said .51 seconds which is totally wrong by 100x at least.

My issue has been inconsistent. Most of the time it is fine but I have also got the same error as dsmith.

No, it's not. I said earlier, "Don't worry about loading time, I can't control that. Look at the time at the bottom of the page."

That is the time it took for the server to output the page. The server has zero control over how long it takes to get over the internet to your device. There's a million variables affecting that, including your device itself and browser.

Interesting read.
I have been getting timeouts often of late.
Maybe Chrome.




Sometimes I accidentally hit the lower SCF search, and with one word, can take some time. Ergo try and remember to type in the Top search first.

I've had the odd timeout and pages slow to load too.

I'm running Firefox.

I do not have a land line Bobby,
only a wi-fi dongle, although it gives reasonable service.
I see Telstra is just releasing its 5G network, only as router format, from what I can see.

Over the last few days. I have also seen the very slow to load issue.