POWWEB Server Speed

[t2muser]

I've loaded my site onto other servers to test, and find that it tends to load much faster. Why do pages take so long to download? (Images seem to "hang" for long seconds.) I've got a high speed connection and my pages are not large, so I'm not sure what I can do.

Since POWWEB is hosting my graphic design site, it's fairly important that it loads as smoothly as possible. Has anyone else experienced this? Any suggestions?!

t2designs.com (http://t2designs.com)

[fcsnc]

I'm in NC, just checked your site, and it's fast from here.

I suggest you go to http://www.pingplotter.com/download.html and try out Pingplotter. Use it to visually trace the route from your computer to your site. If there is packet loss anywhere, that's bad. You should be able to tell if things are slow on your end, your site's end, or somewhere in between.

Report back :)

[Dragon]

If you are using windows you can also try the "ping" command at the dos-prompt

[t2muser]

I've downloaded Pingplotter and run it on my site. I'm still on a learning curve to understand what exactly it's telling me, but packet loss seems to be heavy at the final hop.

I just ran a sample of 100 traces: Packet Loss jumped from 8% at hop 15 (myrient-6.border16.f5-2.lax.pnap.net) to 34% at hop 16 (t2designs.com). Wouldn't this indicate a problem at PowWeb's end?

[fcsnc]

Possibly ... possibly not.

I am behind a firewall at the moment and cannot use pingplotter, but your site is still fast from here.

Next, go to

http://visualware.com/

and try a couple of the free visual traceroutes. This will leave your ISP and your computer out of the loop, and you will see how a visitor would get to t2designs.com from, say, London or Virginia.

The router you mention is upstream from powweb, but unless you can demonstrate consistent packet loss there then Powweb would not be able to help you. At best, they could report it to their upstream ISP.

Just FYI - I used to use a host that had consistent packet loss with three different upstream providers, in spite of the fact that this host was "on-net" and in the same physical building (in other words, co-located) with all three backbones. The President of the company had a cable modem and kept insisting that everything was perfect. I put up with that for about 2 weeks and switched hosts. They weren't about to do anything about it.

Also FYI - Powweb is the fastest shared host I have ever been with, and I have been with some pricey ones.

[keyplyr]

Same here - my site doesn't show half the time and when it does, the files are extremely slow to load... and I have a very fast connection!

[fcsnc]

keyplyr,

What do they say when you e-mail support@powweb.com about this?

Your site is fast from here, too.

Has anyone tried visualware? I can reach either one of your sites from Frankfurt, Germany in 180 milliseconds. Is that slow?

[t2muser]

No, that's not slow. I'm having a hard time figuring this out, though. Can I blame my ISP if the hangups seem to be at the later hops? Any chance of emailing an image of my PingPlotter graphs to you to see what you think? (When I wrote support, they just wrote back and said it didn't sound like a technical problem to them. Thank-yoouuuu!)

[fcsnc]

You can e-mail me any time at Tom@fcsnc.com

[Bud]

t2muser, here are the results of some dos pings I did to compare your site against others with a similar geographical location, each figure is the average of 10 pings (sent at 7:00am my time):

t2designs.com (Rancho Santa Margarita, Ca) = 227ms with 0% packet loss

My customers site at Powweb (on Pluto) = 224ms

Yahoo.com (Sunnyvale, Ca)- 211ms

A customers site at another host (San Jose, Ca)= 253ms


Also, 100 pings to your site resulted in a average return of 240ms and 0% packet loss.

I pinged these from Florida on a 56k, so the ping time for your site is not bad from here and I suffered no packet loss...hope this helps :)

~bud

[t2muser]

Thanx, Bud. It's encouraging to know not everyone is experiencing the "sluggishness" that I am. I guess the path from my ISP to the site must be hitting some snags.