background performance gremlin

[Anole]

I've long suspected it was SatGuys site causing excess internet usage and screen/keyboard slowdowns.
Now, due either to the current version of FireFox (3.6.16), or changes to the SatGuys server, I can see it for sure.
(I did a virus scan, so it's unrelated)

edge.quantserve.com (and others) will repeatedly be accessed without user intervention, about every 15 seconds.

This has been noticeable for a week or two.
I keep multiple tabs open to the SatGuys site, to help with answers and research, and as I type this, I see the rotating icon in an adjacent SatGuy tab running intermittently.

Blocking the above won't cure the problem; it's just the the manifestation of a deeper problem.
And speaking of which, I'm not a Facebook user, so having every access to SatGuys execute a link to them, is unwarranted; simply blocking 'em wouldn't get to the root cause.

Hopefully, these problems are just temporary during software/computer upgrades.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Quantcast is our stats processing company which is required by our ad agencies.

Looks like they might be having an issue today.

 

[Anole]

not just today

edge.quantserve.com (and others) will repeatedly be accessed without user intervention, about every 15 seconds.

This has been noticeable for a week or two.

Maybe you've found a way to pad the paycheck? -

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

No but would be nice if it would. Would be kind of cool to make money from the site instead of always paying money to keep it going.

 

[Anole]

After further research, I see Freezy posted this on 3/16, .... uhhh... 12 days ago.
So, I'm not just seeing things.

What's the deal with every 12 seconds there is a burst uploads off my computer .

one goes to so2md...net another quantiserve, publish.dvlabs

did I just never notice this before?

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

I got this from Quantcast Support a little while ago. I will see about making the changes tomorrow.

Hi Scott,

Thank You for contacting Quantcast!

We had recently rolled out our asynchronous tags which has zero impact on web page load time. You might want to look into implementing that on your sites if you have not already done so. The async tag can be found in the 'generate tag' button of your site.

Let us know if you have any questions.

Quantcast Support Team

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Ok I have updated the code.

Lets hope that helps out!

 

[Anole]

Unless there's something that need be done on this end, I would say we have failed.
I'm still getting the same problem as before.
adds.sixapart? and edge.quantiserve?

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Hmm strange.

Sixapart is one of the ad networks, and quantcast is stats for that ad network. They are loading in an iframe so it does not slow down the loading of SatelliteGuys content. But yes that iframe does refresh every 30 seconds or so.

 

[Anole]

I killed off FireFox and all my tabs with Process Explorer.
When I restarted FireFox, all my tabs were restored.
I have five open to SatGuys at this time.
Of the five, only one is now showing the repeating pattern. (this one)
It appears to depend in where in the site I'm displaying.

CPU usage which showed multiple spikes from a low base-line before, now is running at a much higher average level ( maybe 60%, but with spikes to 100%)
I restore FireFox this way every few days, and this high average level is quite unusual.
I'll drop all my SatGuy tabs, and see if it's related, though it'd be hard to imagine.

 

[Anole]

I closed down all 5 or 6 of my SatGuy tabs.
Still had the high base-line CPU usage.
Tracked it to an open tab to the Galaxy-Marketing site, which had come back up to their front page.
They now have a large spinning globe at the bottom, and it was using tremendous CPU to animate it.

After closing down that tab, we got back to where we could see the little CPU bursts again.
They coincide with -this- page running off to the above-mentioned web sites.
At this time, none of my other open SatGuy tabs seem to be doing the nasty.

Will keep an eye on the situation.
Thanks for your efforts.

edit:
Okay, now as I use the other two SatGuy tabs to browse into threads, they've started auto-executing.
For some reason, this tab (now on a 2nd page) isn't any more.
Guess it depends on what you are serving up on a particular page of the forum.

observation:
This problem has been with me for a long time.
I have grass growing in my CPU usage graph.
I knew it was something. Just hated to try to track it down.
Recently, there was a new clue (SatGuy site change or Firefox change), resulting in the tab icon animating all by itself.
That drew my attention back to the old problem.

Closing down all the SatGuy tabs, as I did above, showed me this grass (cpu spikes) that I've had for months (or more) is all due to something executing on the SatGuys forum.

So, what's actually new, is that it was easier to detect.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

They are not auto executing, just auto refreshing. Executing means running something on you rmachine, refreshing means loading a new version of that code.

Some ads will do an auto refresh, some won't that depends on the ad agency.

 

[Anole]

In the left half of this graph, there is a tiny bit of CPU usage, coincident with I/O spikes, as a communications program runs in the background.
In the right half of the graph, I refreshed this page, and Scott's post showed up (now a total of two).
At that point, the CPU spikes began, accompanied by additional I/O action (disc access).

What I'm demonstrating here, is part of what slows my access to the forum, and I suspect is a contributing factor to the many complaints about forum speed.