Question

Is anybody else noticing slow response to the TWiki.org site on SourceForge?

I've noticed this for a little while, perhaps as long as three weeks. At first I thought it was just me and my dial up modem, but there's been a definite deterioration and it does not apply to most sites I visit, just twiki.org.

One of the things that made me finally post something about this is that the AbiWord TWiki (www.abisource.com/twiki/bin/view/Abiword/AbiWordFAQ, for example) is not nearly as slow.

• TWiki version: Current on twiki.org
• Web server:
• Server OS:
• Web browser: NA (but various -- IE5.5, Mozilla 0.9.8, Konqueror 2.2.2)
• Client OS: NA (but Win95 and Mandrake 8.2)

-- RandyKramer - 01 Jul 2002

Answer

I have not noticed and slowdown. Except somtimes the loading of the SF image is slow, that slows down the complete loading of a TWiki topic, but the content is visible before the image is loaded.

-- PeterThoeny - 02 Jul 2002

Yes, I have noticed a slowdown, but it is intermittent - right now TWiki.org is fine, but over the last day or two it has sometimes timed out on some view or preview operations.

-- RichardDonkin - 02 Jul 2002

Thanks for the responses! Are you both using high speed connections (not sure it would make any difference)?

I guess maybe I should have phrased the problem differently -- I said slow, but really it amounts to a lot more timeouts. At times I thought it occurred primarily for cgi scripts other than view, but I've decided that's not really the case.

Anyway, thinking out loud about the possibilities, I'm still left with the conclusion that my connections to TWiki have deteriorated, and it's not all web sites (no problem on the AbiWord TWiki):

< The following is probably all beside the point -- I should refactor or move it elsewhere sometime in the near future.>

I have upgraded to Mandrake 8.2 and am using Mozilla instead of konqueror, but I'm experiencing the same problem on IE 5.5 on Win95.

I have perhaps an unusual style of working on TWiki while I'm reviewing recent changes in Mandrake -- I keep six windows open with TWiki in each, and every time I refresh a page or call for the next page, I switch to another window. Thus, I sometimes have six windows hitting TWiki at the same time. But, I used to do that with fewer problems. (I used to do this with Konqueror on Mandrake 8.1, but I don't think the onset of this slowness corresponds with the change to Mozilla on Mandrake 8.2), and on IE 5.5 on Win95. And, the problem occurs on IE 5.5 on Win 95 even if I'm only opening one TWiki page.

(Some of which reminds me -- I guess I need to record a new browser problem for Konqueror 2.2.2 (or did I already?) -- I'll have to think how to phrase it, but basically, the text in the edit window will not wrap to the width of the screen, so I have to scroll horizontally while editing. IIRC, this occurs regardless of the setting of the width of the edit window. (That's not entirely accurate -- in addition there is no horizontal scroll bar, so I have to "scroll" using things like the home and end keys. And, I wonder if the problem only occurs on old pages -- I'm going to try a new test page and see what happens.) And, if I did record this problem already, the date of recording it will remind me when I switched to Mandrake 8.2 and/or Mozilla. Oops, did not record the problem, but other clues on the BrowserIssues page lead me to believe I installed Mandrake 8.2 around June 5, i.e., appoximately 3 weeks ago. Still, the (slowness/timeout) problem is not confined to the Mandrake box.)

Maybe it's SourceForge? Maybe they are getting heavily loaded. Probably means if/when I move WikiLearn to a more permanent site I should move it off SourceForge. But why hasn't anyone else noticed a problem -- oops, wait, Peter hasn't but Richard has noticed more timeouts. Ok, I'll see if anybody else weighs in.

Oops, again -- just noticed that Peter mentioned the SF (SourceForge?) image loads slow -- I don't even see a SF image -- he's either using a different skin, or I'm seriously confused (or he meant the TWiki image).

Ok, I do see this in the source for a page, but no image appears, on either Windows or Mandrake -- is this meaningful? Am I somehow using the beta site, naah, can't be. But, why doesn't an image appear?:

<td width="40%" valign="top">
   <font size="-2">Copyright &copy; 1999-2002 by the contributing authors. 
All material on this collaboration tool is the property of the contributing authors. <br /> 
Ideas, requests, problems regarding TWiki? <a href="mailto:Peter@Thoeny.com?subject=TWiki&#32;Feedback">Send</a> feedback
    <!-- NOTE: The following image should not go into Beta!! -->
    <img src="http://sourceforge.net/sflogo.php?group_id=3657&amp;type=1" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" />
    </font>
  </td>

-- RandyKramer - 02 Jul 2002

Timeouts: Yes, they do happen at SF at a rate where I cannot call SF a reliable web service.

Reload many pages at once: SF probably throttles requests coming from the same IP address in rapid intervals. This is to protect the server from badly behaved robots. If you reload many pages at the same time you might get thottled.

SF image: It is there as a 1x1 pixel image. This is for getting the SF access stats. The image is required by SF; I set it to 1x1 pizel because it would be too disturbing.

-- PeterThoeny - 03 Jul 2002

Peter, thanks for the followup!

I don't think I'm requesting pages fast enough to be throttled like a robot, but I'm going to slow down (make my requests less frequent) just to see if that causes an improvement. (But, already I think not, because I have timeouts when I'm doing the six page at a time thing, and when I'm doing the one page at a time thing, and although I get more timeouts when I'm doing six pages, I don't think it's any higher frequency (in terms of timeouts per page request).

Just to make sure I have my thinking straight, the timeout is something that happens in my browser, right? I mean, IIUC, the timeout occurs when my browser doesn't see the response from SourceForge in a timely manner?

And, my problem could be worse than somebody else's because of "local" conditions on the TCP/IP path between SourceForge and my browser? Which means, I can get more timeouts on my dial up connection than somebody else might get on some faster connection?

Anyway, I think I'll try keeping some statistics in terms of timeouts per page request, and see how it sounds to anybody else.

(Yesterday, I had to make three requests for a page before getting it, while it was the only page request pending.)

I'll also try to keep statistics by request type, in other words, separately for view, edit, preview, save, search, and maybe others.

And, I'll plan on using a different web service for the future location of WikiLearn.

-- RandyKramer - 03 Jul 2002

Update: See TWikiOnSourceForgeSlowStatistics.

-- RandyKramer - 03 Jul 2002