Topic: Loooong delays

Over the last week, I've been experiencing increasingly longer delays when reviewing, replying to reviews, or even reading the forum. Today, when reviewing a chapter every comment I made took from 15 to 30 seconds to close and allow me to move to the next spot I wanted to comment on. Even logging in to the site takes 10 to 15 seconds for the logon popup to appear. All the rest of the sites I visit are as fast as usual, including Booksie.

Is anyone else experiencing these delays?

Bill

Quote Post 1

Re: Loooong delays

Nope. Everything is as usual. Good luck. Take care. Vern

Quote Post 2

Re: Loooong delays

Thanks, Vern.

According to AT&T, all the DNS servers are online and functional. Yet, when I clicked the link to this thread in the email, I was told "cannot locate thenextbigwriter.com make sure you have spelled it correctly blah blah blah" I had to put the URL directly into my browser address bar in order to get here. Something strange is going on here. I'm going to try flushing my DNS buffer and see if that helps. It might for locating the site, but not for the delays I'm seeing.

Bill

Quote Post 3

Re: Loooong delays

This site is especially dependent on the quality of the internet connection.  The Windows internet protocol stack seems to amplify poor connections instead of doggedly and smartly pushing through them.

Quote Post 4

Re: Loooong delays

It doesn't seem top have anything to do with Windows as I get the same thing from Linux and a different browser.  None of my other sites are slow or have any trouble loading. Just this site and on Windows/Firefox and Ubuntu/Opera. In Linux I can monitor the IP stack easily and there simply is no response from the site after the browser receives the DNS reply for location. It goes into a wait state and sometimes it will time out, giving me the error "site timed out".

Bill

Quote Post 5

Re: Loooong delays

Do you have Grammarly downloaded and working in the background as you type?  If so, that could be your problem.  For some reason, it slows me down like you describe.  I have to go to my extensions and disable it when I come on this site.  It works fine anywhere else for me, just not here.  Just a thought.

Quote Post 6

Re: Loooong delays

Are your neighbors hacking into your wireless network?

Quote Post 7

Re: Loooong delays

Marilyn Johnson wrote:

Do you have Grammarly downloaded and working in the background as you type?  If so, that could be your problem.  For some reason, it slows me down like you describe.  I have to go to my extensions and disable it when I come on this site.  It works fine anywhere else for me, just not here.  Just a thought.

Funny you should mention Grammarly, Marilyn. I only had it installed for a day before I kicked it out of my browser. It was intrusive and appeared on EVERY site that had an edit box or some form of operator interaction. I slowed down things badly. So, now it's gone and I still ahve delays - but only on tNBW.

Bill

Quote Post 8

Re: Loooong delays

Seabrass wrote:

Are your neighbors hacking into your wireless network?

Another possibility, but not as far as I can tell. I monitor my wireless logs regularly and toss out any MAC addresses I don't know. I change the passwords once a month also. I have four active wireless access points for full coverage of my house. If my bandwidth is reduced it would slow all the sites I visit, not just this one. I can watch streamed movies with no buffering. AT&T uVerse is really good at that.

Bill

Quote Post 9

10 Reply by njc

Re: Loooong delays

Okay, it's not Windows on your end.  I don't know what servers TNBW uses, but the different parts of their site are often out of sync, so I assume the platform archtecture has compromises.  That said, my results with the site do depend on the quality of my wireless connections.  And commercial carriers have QoS controls that might look at delays (possibly imposed near their periphery) and use those to calibrate the QoS for your connection.  When you look at the conflicting pressures on the implementors (corporate goals vs. customer service vs. getting it out tomorrow) it's a miracle it works at all.
Which doesn't make me any less angry about the crappy work.  (Actually crap makes good fertilizer.  This is more like toxic waste--cyanide of dioxin of biphenol.)

Quote Post 10

Re: Loooong delays

B Douglas Slack wrote:

Funny you should mention Grammarly, Marilyn. I only had it installed for a day before I kicked it out of my browser. It was intrusive and appeared on EVERY site that had an edit box or some form of operator interaction. I slowed down things badly. So, now it's gone and I still ahve delays - but only on tNBW.

Bill


Did you uninstall it, or did you just disable it in your extensions?  I am far from a computer guru, but if you uninstalled it, it may not have uninstalled everything connected to it.  I used to have a program downloaded (can't remember the name of it now because I am OLD!) that would do a complete uninstall for anything I wanted to delete completely.  But that was probably 5 or 6 computers ago.  You might google 'complete uninstall software' and see if you can find it.  You might also want to make sure it's not still hanging around in your extensions.  If so, you can disable it.  I don't know what operating system you're running, but it's under my tools on Chrome.

Your problem sounds exactly like the one I have with Grammarly.

Quote Post 11

12 Reply by B Douglas Slack (edited by B Douglas Slack 2017-07-10 15:33:19)

Re: Loooong delays

Thanks, Marilyn. I think the program you're thinking of is Revo Uninstaller. I use that extensively. It allows the normal uninstalled (if any) to run first then it charges through the Registry and finds every instance of that deleted software, letting you pick what to get rid of. I've disabled Grammarly, but not uninstalled it. That will be done.

The delays are a naggy problem that has cropped up before on this site. I think NJC may have the right idea. I have a home page link set up for tNBW and when I click it, the status line shows "looking up www.thenextbigwriter.com". That remains there for as long as 10 or 15 seconds before finally changing to "receiving data from www.thenextbigwriter.com" and the page loads. Firefox won't display the first indicator unless the DNS server(s) isn't/aren't responding fast enough. AT&T recommends that I reboot my modem, but that can take up to ten minutes so I have to find a good time to do that. This could/would/might cause the DNS server cache to be cleared and rebuild. It has helped in the past.

I'll give it a whack when I go to lunch.

Bill

Quote Post 12

Re: Loooong delays

I'm on Chrome & haven't noticed any delays. You've probably tried switching browsers, Bill, but if not I thought I'd mention it. Sometimes things lag on my end depending on the browser.

Quote Post 13

Re: Loooong delays

I'm running some tests now, but I may have found the problem, Corra. A series of PINGs against the DNS servers my router lists shows one of them responds 150ms slower than the rest which are nominally around 12-15ms. It is also interesting that a TRACERT to this site has two more intermediate stops between it and me as Booksie does. Any of those intermediate relay points could have something wrong with them also.

Today, 4 entries in my Event Viewer showed this error:

"Name resolution for the name www.thenextbigwriter.com timed out after none of the configured DNS servers responded."

If Sol is doing some maintenance to the site, it is possible that the DNS servers aren't keeping up with the listing on a timely basis.

Still checking.

Bill

Quote Post 14

15 Reply by B Douglas Slack (edited by B Douglas Slack 2017-07-11 03:39:30)

Re: Loooong delays

Here's the skinny. AT&T became evasive when I asked them the current state of their links and DNS servers. They grudgingly admitted that one of the backbone hi-speed servers went down and they had to reroute traffic a little. I affected some URLs but not others. I found four more of my sites (ones I don't use that much) that were slow or timed out.

I did a total system restart on my uVerse modem and when it came back, Everything was a lot faster -- including this site. I ended up with a completely new IPV6 subnet address address as well as a new "normal" IPV4 address. Apparently, they weren't kidding about a server going down. This clears the DMS cache and reloads a fresh set.

I hope it stays that way.

Bill

Quote Post 15

16 Reply by njc

Re: Loooong delays

Last week Optimum's entire DNS system in the northeast USA went down for several hours overnight.

Maybe it was a bug.

Maybe it was hackers probing weaknesses.

Choose your preferred dose of worry.

Quote Post 16

17 Reply by B Douglas Slack (edited by B Douglas Slack 2017-07-25 20:31:55)

Re: Loooong delays

I am still being plagued with extended delays. This manifests itself especially when reviewing my own in-line comments on another author's chapter. I click on the blue highlight and wait, and wait, and wait, and wait. According to my traffic monitor, a query for display has been sent to tNBW, but nothing is received. If I wait long enough, it times out. Even though I hate Internet Exploder, this behavior is still present if I use that as a test. Something is either not fielding the request at the site, or that response is being dropped on the floor. Most times, I can finally view my comment if I close and re-open the comment repeatedly -- or click another comment and then go back to the original one.

Bill

Quote Post 17

Re: Loooong delays

Bill, why not use the x-line tab within the review screen to see all of your comments (and author replies) at once?

Quote Post 18

Re: Loooong delays

I tried that, but it never completed loading. When I finally gave up, most of the comments hadn't populated yet either. There is something wrong here, but I can't put my finger on it.

Bill

Quote Post 19

20 Reply by njc

Re: Loooong delays

That seems to happen when the network connection is balky.

Quote Post 20