Man! Subscribing to AT is worth it!!

[Beau]

I thought I was gonna go nuts with how long it takes to get these forums to load. So I buckled and bought a years membership. Totally worth it. These pages load soooooo fast now! Anyone else?

 

[khtm]

hmm..

 

[Rallispec]

i wasnt sure if it would be worth it or not, so i only bought the 3 month subcsription.. i'll definetly renew it and get a year's subsription when this one runs out. completely worth it.

 

[GTaudiophile]

The 1000 PM Limit is totally worth it too. Load-times improved slightly, but not dramatically. The Buddy List is cool too.

 

[Ameesh]

<< hmm.. >>



ohh shutup!




i was just thinking the oppisite, load times are exactly the same for me, not worth the money at all.

 

[Beau]

I haven't played with all the features yet... I'm still in shock on the speed the pages load... seriously 4-5 times faster for me!

 

[aphex]

shhhhhh... we need to stop advertising it like this.. The more peeps we get on the subscribers, the slower it will go....

yea, it uhm sucks.. yea

 

[Static911]

agreed ameesh

sometimes, it slows down soooooooooooo much, I tested the regular http://forums... well, took same time to load

static911

 

[Beau]

Next thing that needs to happen here (for subscribers at least) is regional mirrors. That would really speed things up for everyone.

 

[Beau]

<< shhhhhh... we need to stop advertising it like this.. The more peeps we get on the subscribers, the slower it will go.... yea, it uhm sucks.. yea >>


Oh... umm.... yeah.....

 

[Ameesh]

<< Next thing that needs to happen here (for subscribers at least) is regional mirrors. That would really speed things up for everyone. >>



i dont think thats gonna happen, but we should at least have an NLB Cluster behind the subscriber dns name

 

[FrustratedUser]

Please continue to sign up.
Then users like me will have faster forums when nobody uses the free version.

 

[Beau]

Well.. at least a west coast mirror. Don't know if the NLB being behind the DNS will help people who's connections to this forum are already bad. If it could balance between a server in Above.net in San Jose (or another major hub) and where evern in the eastcoast they are.... now that would be a dream!

 

[AndrewR]

Ok, Anand -- you can stop the surreptitious advertising...



j/k

 

[Ornery]

Loads a lot faster for me on dial-up. Perhaps is because the ads aren't loading. That's gotta help. Either way I'm really glad I got it!

 

[Beau]

<< Ok, Anand -- you can stop the surreptitious advertising... j/k >>

lol

 

[Beau]

<< Loads a lot faster for me on dial-up. Perhaps is because the ads aren't loading. That's gotta help. Either way I'm really glad I got it! >>

Definitely 'cuz of the ads. Those things usually timed out anyway.

 

[Amused]

Faster? Yes, and no.

My ping times for subscriber.anandtech.com:

Starting ping - Dec 07, 2001 16:47:23
Pinging subscriber.anandtech.com [216.151.100.119]....
IP Address RTT(ms) TTL Bytes Received
216.151.100.119-- 53-- 114-- 64
216.151.100.119-- 51-- 114-- 64
216.151.100.119-- 51-- 114-- 64
216.151.100.119-- 69-- 114-- 64
216.151.100.119-- 53-- 114-- 64
216.151.100.119-- 54-- 114-- 64
216.151.100.119-- 59-- 114-- 64
216.151.100.119-- 57-- 114-- 64
216.151.100.119-- 53-- 114-- 64
216.151.100.119-- 51-- 114-- 64
216.151.100.119-- 78-- 114-- 64
TIMED OUT----
216.151.100.119-- 52-- 114-- 64
216.151.100.119-- 81-- 114-- 64
TIMED OUT---
216.151.100.119-- 60-- 114-- 64
216.151.100.119-- 113-- 114-- 64
216.151.100.119-- 81-- 114-- 64
216.151.100.119-- 54-- 114-- 64
216.151.100.119-- 51-- 114-- 64
Ping Successful
18 packets received out of 20 packets transmitted : 10% PACKET LOSS
Round Trip Time (in milliseconds) Max/Min/Av: 113/51/62

=====
My ping for forums.anandtech.com:

Starting ping - Dec 07, 2001 16:48:57
Pinging forums.anandtech.com [216.151.100.125]....
IP Address RTT(ms) TTL Bytes Received
216.151.100.125 --52 -- 241-- 64
216.151.100.125 --51 -- 241-- 64
216.151.100.125 --51 -- 241-- 64
216.151.100.125 --53 -- 241-- 64
216.151.100.125 --74 -- 241-- 64
216.151.100.125 --57 -- 241-- 64
216.151.100.125 --72 -- 241-- 64
216.151.100.125 --53 -- 241-- 64
216.151.100.125 --53 -- 241-- 64
216.151.100.125 --51 -- 241-- 64
216.151.100.125 --53 -- 241-- 64
216.151.100.125 --50 -- 241-- 64
216.151.100.125 --89 -- 241-- 64
216.151.100.125 --57 -- 241-- 64
216.151.100.125 --50 -- 241-- 64
216.151.100.125 --53 -- 241-- 64
216.151.100.125 --50 -- 241-- 64
216.151.100.125 --52 -- 241-- 64
216.151.100.125 --55 -- 241-- 64
216.151.100.125 --71 -- 241-- 64
Ping Successful
20 packets received out of 20 packets transmitted : 0% PACKET LOSS
Round Trip Time (in milliseconds) Max/Min/Av: 89/50/57

=========

When I GET the packets, they download faster, yes. But with pages stalling 10% of the time, it gets a bit old.

BTW, I have NO lost packets to any other site including Yahoo and Fox news.

 

[Renob]

I only see a very little diff between the free forums and the pay forums. I was hopeing it would be alot faster..

 

[Beau]

Like I said, I'd like to see them put up a West Coast server, in a larger hub than where they are at. Possibly MFN in San Jose. That would solve the timeout problems for a lot of us.

 

[Viper GTS]

AmusedOne

Something interesting from VisualRoute. I ran traceroutes to both forums.anandtech.com and subscriber.anandtech.com:

Message from forums.anandtech.com:

Analysis: 'forums.anandtech.com' was found in 12 hops (TTL=240).

Message from subscriber.anandtech.com:

Analysis: 'subscriber.anandtech.com' was found in 12 hops (TTL=113). But, the node is losing packets.

I don't know how Zuni can deny that there is a problem, running a traceroute from VisualRoute completely eliminates my connection as the source of the problem.

Viper GTS <-- Has observed stalled pages & timeouts as well, but overall is happy with his subscription

 

[Beau]

The servers are all in the same location aren't they? That doesn't make sense. I tried it with VR as well and got the same info. Wonder if it is the same box running all the subscriber. / forums. If not, it might be hardware related.

 

[Amused]

Well, Viper, it's time they looked at it. I didn't pay for lost packets... I hope.

 

[Viper GTS]

I sent a letter to Anand just minutes ago:

Anand...

I would have posted this in Forum Issues, but it's been posted before &
categorically denied each time by Zuni, citing connection problems
on the user end.

I subscribed to the forums the day the option became available, & have been
generally pleased with the performance & enhanced features. However...

Recently many people have been experiencing packet loss off the subscriber
server, but not off the regular forums server.

Today I ran traceroutes from visualroute.com (I used their live demo feature
to eliminate my connection as being the source of trouble), with the following
results (the important part, the full results are attached):

Subscriber:

Analysis: 'subscriber.anandtech.com' was found in 12 hops (TTL=113). But,
the node is losing packets.

Regular:

Analysis: 'forums.anandtech.com' was found in 12 hops (TTL=240).

I'm not quite sure what to make of this, since the traceroutes are identical
in both path and performance up until the last hop. Others have run this
same test, with identical results. Occasionally the subscriber forum will
be located with no packet loss, but it is much more frequent that visualroute
reports packet loss at the node.

Overall I've been very pleased with the subscription service, but the occasional
stalled loads & timeouts are a concern. The problem may not be with the
forum servers themselves, but something appears to be amiss. When pages
load they load quickly, but packet loss simply shouldn't be there.

I intend to continue my subscription, as I make use of the extra PM's &
the speed is much improved over the regular forums. However, the packet
loss issue is being discussed in multiple threads & will probably result
in turning away some potential subscribers. It might be worth looking into.

Thanks,

Gregg Bishop
AKA Viper GTS

Hopefully it will get some answers.

Viper GTS

 

[Amused]

Thanks, Viper. I hope they can see the light here. If it's only happening on the subscriber forums, and not on any other website, I can be damn sure it's not a problem on my end.