Changes To The Server

[rawTOP]

The Tl;DR version: A number of changes are being made to the server this coming Tuesday starting at noon. It would help a lot if you could make note of how fast pages load now and then after the changes are made. I'm especially interested in how the changes impact users – especially those on cell networks and those outside the US – Europe, Australia, South America and South Africa.

The longer, technical version: Right now my server does not support HTTP/2. My hosting company will be upgrading Debian (the operating system) so it can serve pages using HTTP/2. And currently I'm using a CDN to serve many of the images on the site, but my cache hit ratio is only 80%. After the server supports HTTP/2 I'll be ditching the CDN and images will be served directly from the server.

The slightly less technical version: Right now things like images are cached on edge servers around the world so people who aren't near my server can load them faster. But when the edge server doesn't have the image (20% of the time), it takes longer to load the image that it would if the person hit the server directly. And the way my server currently serves files can be really slow for people who are far away from my server (in Atlanta). My host will be doing an upgrade that allows the files to be served differently (HTTP/2) which should reduce the penalty of being far away from the server. So bottom line – people in places like Australia will be able to load pages nearly as quickly as people in the US – in most cases – if there's network congestion between the server and the user then things may actually be worse than they are now. So people on "dirty" cell networks are of particular interest.

 

After Tuesday this will be the thread where you can tell me whether things have gotten better or worse. I'll need to to know:

1. your location
2. what type of device you're using
3. what type of Internet connection you're on

[rawTOP]

I need the help of one or more of you who are in far-flung places like Australia, South America or Asia. This is semi-technical, so if you can't figure it out, thanks for trying… Hopefully someone else can figure it out and give me the feedback I'm needing.

1. Open some browser that you haven't used to access this site.
2. Right click anywhere on the page and you'll hopefully see something like "Inspect" or "Inspect element". If it's not there you may need to turn on developer tools up in something like a tools menu (depends on the browser what that's called).
3. The window that comes up will have a bunch of tabs. Navigate to the one that says "Network".
4. Enter the URL https://breeding.zone and you'll see every file that makes up the page scroll across the window.
5. At the bottom of all those lines you'll see a summary line. I need to know what you see on that line right after the page stops loading. It will give one or more times in seconds (or milliseconds), and an amount transferred (probably in KB or MB). And please let me know the label that's shown on each number. (e.g. Chrome shows two times "DOMContentLoaded" and "Load", whereas Firefox only shows "finish").
6. Then reload the page and make note of the numbers again. (It should be faster since some of the stuff will be cached by your browser).

Then just tell me what browser you got the numbers from, your country, the browser you were using, and your type of internet connection (upload/download speed, if you know it).

[henriex]

From Mexico too?

[chasejake666]

The chat doesn't ask for multiple confirmations anymore. Australia, Mac, Google Chrome, VPN

[rawTOP]

5 hours ago, henriex said:

From Mexico too?

Mexico is close to data centers in the US, so if there are issues they’re different than the ones I was looking to examine. Basically in networking the two problems are latency (caused by distance) and packet loss (caused by network congestion). I’m mostly looking to figure out the effect of latency, but am mildly interested in packet loss. The upgrades to the server could actually make things worse for people on poor internet connections with lots of packet loss. 

Mexico is close to the US so latency isn’t an issue, but packet loss might be an issue, so feel free to run the test if the instructions make sense to you, but I still need results from Australia or South America. 

[viking8x6]

Seems a shade faster even from West Virginia (Comcast), FWIW. Page load before was 2-3 secs, maybe, and now about 1.5-2.5 or so, at a guess.

[rawTOP]

4 minutes ago, vnaught8x6 said:

Seems a shade faster even from West Virginia (Comcast), FWIW. Page load before was 2-3 secs, maybe, and now about 1.5-2.5 or so, at a guess.

That's not surprising and in line with what I'm seeing in my testing. In the US the page load times seem to roughly similar in the US (wouldn't surprise me at all if it was faster in some places – especially as you get closer to Atlanta where my server is). But when you get to Europe the old way is a bit faster, and when you get to remote places like Australia, South America or South Africa the page load times double and initial page load times are so bad it will turn away visitors from those places.

So basically I'm going through all this to keep 5-10% of my visitors happy. At times I wonder if it's worth it. Especially when I can't get any people from those places to chime in on a thread like this which is all about their needs…

[Guest takingdeepanal]

Just logged in, using Chrome on my mobile (Samsung Galaxy A3 phone). Slightly faster, so all good from my end. Will later log in today using my laptop (I use Firefox as my browser). Will let you know what I find out.

[SubFFboy]

I'm using Firefox Quantum on macOS X High Sierra from Melbourne, Australia. Internet is 100/40Mbps FTTH. The site definitely feels snappier. I used to have to wait for some of the more dynamic elements (like the chat count or notifications) which are appearing quicker.

Any chance you can enable IPv6? I have a dual-stack connection that preferences AAAA records so that would make things better again Also, it's the future, man.

[Guest takingdeepanal]

Firefox here as well. Running through a Lenovo ideapad510 with Windows 10. A fraction quicker than what I was see earlier this week, so all is good!

[pozmeup69]

My internet is pretty slow compared to most others, even in Australia. I get about 4Mbps download speed. The site loads perfectly fine and quite quickly in my opinion. I normally use Chrome and I can do those tests for you but since you wanted to test it on a different browser I don't know if I can help. I never use other browsers and wouldn't know how to access all those tools on other browsers anyway.

[rawTOP]

I just want to say a huge thanks to all you Aussies who just chimed in. It wasn't the technical details I was hoping for, but since there were so many of you, it's just as good. Apparently, my host still hasn't completed all their tweaks, so please continue to monitor the speed and let me know your thoughts.

[Guest takingdeepanal]

1 minute ago, rawTOP said:

I just want to say a huge thanks to all you Aussies who just chimed in. It wasn't the technical details I was hoping for, but since there were so many of you, it's just as good. Apparently, my host still hasn't completed all their tweaks, so please continue to monitor the speed and let me know your thoughts.

Will do. Looking good so far.

[sleazebugga]

All good here on an Android mobile using Chrome also on windows 10 pc also using Chrome. In UK.

[Guest takingdeepanal]

Just got this trying to log in (seems to be okay now), using aforementioned cellphone (chrome) - url https://breeding.zone

 

Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator at webmaster@breeding.zone to inform them of the time this error occurred, and the actions you performed just before this error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

Apache/2.4.25 (Debian) Server at breeding.zone Port 443

Edited April 27, 2018 by takingdeepanal