Update on Server Problems

[Scott Greczkowski]

Hi folks,

As you may have seen we are having some growing pains. The problem we are growing two quick. Yesterday we were having over 2,000 people at a time trying to connect to the server at a time! This load was causing the server to reboot which is not a good thing as even though we are on a semi dedicated server there are a few other sites hosted by this server.

To keep the server from rebooting and bringing down the other sites a limit has been placed on incoming connections. Because of this you may have gotten a server is busy message. For this we are sorry.

We do not blame the ISP for taking these steps, we want to be a good neighbor with everyone on the server. I have been really satisfied with our hosting from the folks at F5HOSTING.COM and would like to stay with them

In our pub member area we are talking about BUYING our own powerhouse of a server, complete with dual XEON processors, and lots of RAM. The cost to buy a system like this is NOT cheap.

I am also looking into leasing a server. I want to be able to present all options to our supporters before making the leap.

SatelliteGuys.US is not going anywhere. There may be problems getting online over the next few days, but we will still be here.

If you would like to help us with our move to the new servers please CLICK HERE

I once again appologize for the dificulties getting in, but I am doing everything in my power to bring you a world class site you can be proud of.

Thank you for your support!

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Ok I have made a change to the server. When you see who's online you might notice a small number and not the normal 400 or so online that you would normally see.

The reason for this is I have set the user cookies to time out after just a few seconds, instead of 1 hour. Most sites set their timeouts to an hour or more. With the timeouts set that high it thinks the user is still online reading messages. By setting the timeout to just a few seconds the server thinks less people are online, and with our user online limit set to 300 we can fit more users in.

Enjoy the site!

 

[Sean Mota]

Any luck on getting this resolved. It is still not letting people in... Maybe you should restrict it to just people that are registered for the time being until a better solution arrives. Right now is not letting anyone in and we do not have 150 users online.

Theres got to be more than meet the eyes here. We only have 48 users online and we still get the message when trying to get into the portal.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

You can't restrict it to registered / unregistered, it just counts the total number of people connected.

I upped it to 15 minutes on the cookie time, I will reset it to 30 seconds, that should let people in.

 

[Sean Mota]

getting to the serve is like playing russian roulette... You don't know when you are going to be in or out... I was watching people getting in I can see those taken out by the server...

 

[Sean Mota]

It looks like it will not allow more than 14 members to log in... I hope I am not dropped before...yach...

 

[Sean Mota]

it reach 15 registered members then it stars dropping members and then takes you to the busy page.

 

[James Long]

The homepage says the max connections has been 926 - Yesterday at 4:16pm??? The ISP has to protect the other users of your server, but it seems like they set the threshold WAY too low. Right now 13 members and 20 guests.

If you closed the forums to "guests" temporarily could you convince the hosting company to ease up on the restriction?

BTW: The 30 second cookies seems like a killer. One can barely type one reply in 30 seconds. Once expired, nothing is new. And now I can't get this reply to post without multiple attempts.

JL

 

[Stargazer]

I get the same problem. It causes you to have to go through all the posts in each forum and you can hardly do that in itself, let alone read all the posts, then type a reply.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Update...

It seems like things are getting back to normal.

It was reported to me that on one search if you typed in "Janet Jackson High Definition" we were ranked 4th in the search.

The amount of traffic looking for the pics is also dieing quickly.

Our user limit restriction has been lifted for now.

Please if Janet Jackson or anyone else flashes at the Grammy's please do not post the images here no matter how good they look in HD

Even though we appear to be in the clear for the moment, we are still working on moving us to a dedicated server.

Thanks everyone for your patience.

 

[markdl]

Scott - you can cut off guest viewing with a VB3 hack from vbulliten.org.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

The problem is I don't want to cut off guest viewing. A majority of our traffic is guests.

 

[Stargazer]

That is how you get more registered members is by allowing guests to come in.

 

[James Long]

The problem is I don't want to cut off guest viewing. A majority of our traffic is guests.

And what percentage of guests chip in to support the forum?

(Trick Answer: All, since you have guest advertising.)

I suppose it comes down to personal preference. As long as /Supporters can continue to post and read and get their daily/hourly/constant fix for news allowing guests does little harm. This week was one where harm was done.

I am glad to see guest posting turned off in any forum. One can still be anonymous without being totally unaccountable "guests".

JL

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Well I have some good news for you guys but I have to dot my I's and cross my T's before I can announce it. I do hope to announce something tommorow.