# Oddities in WR



## Silvia

Hi Mike,

I'm experiencing some problems today in WR. I don't know if it's just me or there are other people going through this.

The oddities I'm talking about are ghost posts, that is I see the post is there, but if I go to the IT_EN forum main page, it says 0 replies. The example shown is not the only one.

What's up?


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## lsp

I agree, and I had 2 timeouts (only in IE) today, which has never happened before in any part of the forums.


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## Jana337

lsp said:
			
		

> I agree, and I had 2 timeouts (only in IE) today, which has never happened before in any part of the forums.



I have been experiencing timeouts for approximately one week - "the document contains no data". I am using Mozilla.

Jana


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## Silvia

Thanks for sharing, lsp. I dare say the site is also incredibly slow.


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## lsp

Silvia said:
			
		

> Thanks for sharing, lsp. I dare say the site is also incredibly slow.


Aside from the timeouts, I am not having speed problems, though


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## cuchuflete

I have had no problems today, although the net is generally slow, or my ISP (not to be confused with our very own LSP!) may be cranky. Mr. K sometimes does upgrade work on the weekends, and as he is not visibly here to defend himself, I'll suggest that this just might {subjunctive, speculative, unfounded!!} be a piece of the puzzle.

Just be patient, he said, staring at his watch. Things will improve, eventually, or get worse. More likely they will get better. Shall we start a poll?


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## Silvia

cuchuflete said:
			
		

> Just be patient, he said, staring at his watch...


 Now, around 3 hours after I posted in that thread, it says 1 instead of 0.

Cuciu, you might be right assuming Mike's working behind the scenes, nevertheless I think it is good to let him know of any irregularity.


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## lsp

cuchuflete said:
			
		

> ...or my ISP (not to be confused with our very own LSP!)


We thank you for noticing,
LSP and her alterego, ISP


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## cuchuflete

Cara Silvia, there are scientific explanations for everything.  Most of them are wrong or immaterial, but they exist, nonetheless.



			
				Silvia said:
			
		

> Now, around 3 hours after I posted in that thread, it says 1 instead of 0. Binary code is all about 1's and 0's!  In fact, when Mike does an upgrade or re-boot, the counter for the main menu can skip a beat.  This happened to me once before.  I 'tricked' the system to show your reply in the main menu for IT/EN.  Your post was always visible.
> 
> Cuciu, you might be right assuming Mike's working behind the scenes, nevertheless I think it is good to let him know of any irregularity. OH,  Heavens!!  You aren't threatening to tell him about me, are you?


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## mkellogg

Hey everyone,

Since Tuesday or Wednesday there has been a big attack against the ISP that hosts my servers.  That is the main reason why you have been having so many timeouts.  It has been driving me nuts too, but there isn't much that I can do about it.

I've been doing some other things and had to reboot the server this morning, too.  Yes, Cuchu's right, I've been testing things.  (The spell check for mistyped queries to the main dictionaries is going to be great if I can ever get it working!)  But this shouldn't have affected much...I think.

Let me repair the tables in the database just in case.

Please let me know in this thread if the problems continue.

Thanks,
Mike


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## alc112

Thank you Mike!!
That's why I had problems with the speed here. (now i'm having problems to post, when I press post quick reply, it takes to an error page).


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## cuchuflete

Last night for me--early morning in Europe--both WR and all other web sites were very slow for me...  This morning...afternoon in Europe, everything seems back to normal.
WR page refresh is instantaneous.


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## mkellogg

I'm using Quick Reply for this message.  If anybody else has problems with Quick Reply, let me know.


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## Jana337

I am having the same problems with Quick and with Advanced Replies:-( The forum keeps being terribly slow. Other webpages load and refresh perfectly. 

Jana


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## mkellogg

I don't see many problems here this morning, either with the network or the server.

One tool that some of you could use to see if it is the server or the network is PingPlotter.  Windows users can use this tool to see your connectivity to the server.  Type in forum.wordreference.com into the box, and it will show you statistics for every hop along the way to the server.

If many pings are lost at the server, it is the server that is causing the issue. If there are failures starting closer to your home, then you can see where the problem lies.  It doesn't solve all the problems but can show you if it is a network issue or not.

I am also kind of interested in the average response time from various parts of the world from the "avg" column if anyone installs it.

Mike


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## Jana337

Hi Mike,

I installed the thing. Let me try to describe what I see:

There are 18 hops.
The first one has no DNS name and the packet loss (PL) is 100 %.
The second is my provider's name with PL oscillating around 10 percent. 
No packets are being lost in Germany (1 hop). Edit: sometimes a number close to 10 pops up.
Then there are three British hops, each with 20-30 PL.
Something uniddentifiable follows, then again something British (the DNS start with so and PO12 but there is London in the name, again with PL of cca 40).
Afterwards we come to New York, Ashburn and other places, again with numbers oscilllating around 20.
The hop preceding the forum (its name is vl2.msfc1.distb2.dca2.hopone.net) never goes under 80 and is at 100 most of the time.
The same for forum.wordreference.com. Currently at 100 %.

The numbers in the Avg column are:
85 - 12 - 25 -38 - 86 - 39 - 86 -39 - 49 - 44 - 40 - 142 - 123 - 113 - 119 - 121 - 122 - 123 -124.

Hat off if you can understand it. For me it was fun to see which way the packets go. 

Jana


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## Jana337

Ooops, I did not have to bother to copy it all - the statistics can be copied as an image

Jana


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## cuchuflete

For Mac users,

Open Network Utility, select the "Ping" tab, and type in www.wordreference.com.

Here are the results:



> --- www.wordreference.com ping statistics ---
> 10 packets transmitted, 10 packets received, 0% packet loss
> round-trip min/avg/max = 43.307/47.191/48.775 ms



If anyone needs help finding this, PM me.  I'm running OS 10.2.8, but you can find the utility by typing "Ping" in Finder Help.

cheers,
Cuchuflete


PS-  the trace...



> Traceroute has started ...
> 
> traceroute to www.wordreference.com (66.235.168.158), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
> 1  * * *
> 2  bvi4s3.dsl-atm.a10.dc.midcoast.com   59.574 ms  21.978 ms  23.123 ms
> 3  eth4.blackcoffee.a5.dc.midcoast.com (10.0.18.1)  23.436 ms  23.806 ms  47.97 ms
> 4  zoombrew.midcoast.com (10.0.15.5)  23.831 ms  26.45 ms  22.363 ms
> 5  12.119.185.129 (12.119.185.129)  33.648 ms  24.278 ms  24.071 ms
> 6  gbr2-p21.cb1ma.ip.att.net (12.123.202.70)  26.982 ms  21.644 ms  21.951 ms
> 7  tbr1-p013702.cb1ma.ip.att.net (12.122.5.61)  26.97 ms  29.644 ms  22.149 ms
> 8  tbr2-cl1.n54ny.ip.att.net (12.122.10.22)  36.887 ms  31.588 ms  31.718 ms
> 9  ggr2-p3120.n54ny.ip.att.net (12.123.3.109)  39.542 ms  39.819 ms  36.705 ms
> 10  so-0-2-0.gar4.newyork1.level3.net (209.244.160.129)  37.239 ms  31.682 ms  37.327 ms
> 11  ae-1-53.bbr1.newyork1.level3.net (4.68.97.65)  32.346 ms ae-1-55.bbr1.newyork1.level3.net (4.68.97.129)  60.021 ms ae-1-53.bbr1.newyork1.level3.net (4.68.97.65)  37.866 ms
> 12  as-1-0.bbr2.washington1.level3.net (64.159.1.86)  35.401 ms as-3-0.bbr1.washington1.level3.net (64.159.3.254)  43.244 ms  30.818 ms
> *13  ge-1-2-54.car2.washington1.level3.net (4.68.121.102)  51.747 ms* ge-1-2-56.car2.washington1.level3.net (4.68.121.166)  49.649 ms ge-1-1-55.car2.washington1.level3.net (4.68.121.134)  46.299 ms
> 14  * * *
> 15  * * *
> 16  www.wordreference.com (66.235.168.158)  60.664 ms  40.645 ms  46.977 ms


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## lsp

--- www.wordreference.com ping statistics ---
10 packets transmitted, 10 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 17.508/19.290/25.323/2.172 ms

in english: FAST!


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## Silvia

So, is it serious, Mr Kellogg?


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## mkellogg

Jana,
If you are having 20-30% packet loss before it crosses the Atlantic, the problem is probably with the network there. But with this, you would probably see problems with many websites hosted in the US. You will probably see similar results tracing to www.wordreference.com and it.wordreference.com. 124ms round trip? not too bad... If you are seeing 100% packet loss on the server at times, then the question is if the hops before it have so much packet loss. If a router in the UK is dropping all the packets then you will see 100% packet loss all the way to the server.

lsp, you are really close...

I'll keep investigating though.

Mike


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## Jana337

Mike,

some US sites do indeed refresh longer than before but the forum's page is the only where I need to wait for 5 minutes to see "the document contains no data"... Is there something that I as an end user can do about it?

Jana


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## mkellogg

Is anybody else having the same timeouts as Jana is experiencing?


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## Agnès E.

Bonjour Mike,
I just had a problem on that thread:

http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=30848

I posted a reply about 10 minutes ago and it has disappeared (although there are 2 views, mine and Sev's). I posted it with the "quick reply" tool and I saw it. When I came back to the French-English forum, it had disappeared in the meantime.
The same has occured several times since the beginning of May.
Apart of that and the connection problem you solved some days ago, I have no other problems.


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## Jana337

mkellogg said:
			
		

> Is anybody else having the same timeouts as Jana is experiencing?



Good news: The website is not terribly fast but substantially better than in the last five days. Pretty tolerable. Have you changed anything?

Jana


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## mkellogg

No I haven't changed a thing.  Let's keep our fingers crossed.

Mike


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## Whodunit

I found the next oddity. Mike, I only want to know if it is temporary, okay?

In the "Congrats Pages" forum, in the thread called "Happy 58th Birthday Rayines", I was the last one who posted:



> Yesterday 05:47 PM
> by Whodunit



But there hasn't been a tick that _I_ posted. You're the Admin, and you maybe have the power to visit this forum from my view. I mean every thread I posted in is "supplied" with a blue-white tick.


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## alc112

I had a similar problems some week ago.
I replied to a thread and my message doesn't appear in the index as a new reply and it was the newest reply in that moment.


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## cuchuflete

Ladies and Gents...

I have had the same experience, although it is rare.


Here is what I believe causes it...{and, by the way, I don't believe it can be corrected after the fact.}...now and then Mike has to reboot the servers to apply upgrades, or he does a system backup.   While these events are underway, there is 'record locking' for the records and files.  If, by strange but possible circumstances, your particular submission gets caught at the milisecond when the record lock is being invoked, your post will appear, but it will not be shown in the menu.

Yesterday there was an "event" caused by mysterious external forces...just when I was opening a PM.  As a result of this, my PM counter reads "1" even after I have read all of my messages.  All of this should self correct with the next system reboot.  
For now, these things are just a minor nuisance.  Please try to ignore them.

If they bother you so much that you are losing sleep over them, please post the thread title and post number in question, and I'll tinker around a little to see if I can help.

regards,
Cuchu




			
				alc112 said:
			
		

> I had a similar problems some week ago.
> I replied to a thread and my message doesn't appear in the index as a new reply and it was the newest reply in that moment.


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## cuchuflete

Dan,

As of this moment, you show up as the last one to post in that thread. I "tricked" the software by posting, and then deleting my own post. 
I hope this is settled now

C. 




			
				Whodunit said:
			
		

> I found the next oddity. Mike, I only want to know if it is temporary, okay?
> 
> In the "Congrats Pages" forum, in the thread called "Happy 58th Birthday Rayines", I was the last one who posted:
> 
> 
> 
> But there hasn't been a tick that _I_ posted. You're the Admin, and you maybe have the power to visit this forum from my view. I mean every thread I posted in is "supplied" with a blue-white tick.


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## Whodunit

cuchuflete said:
			
		

> Dan,
> 
> As of this moment, you show up as the last one to post in that thread. I "tricked" the software by posting, and then deleting my own post.
> I hope this is settled now
> 
> C.



No C,

not yet. I asked for the little blue-white tick at the end of the line where the thread title is said. It's not there, but I'm the one who posted last.


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## cuchuflete

I haven't figured out the little blue-white tick business...does this really matter in any substantial way?


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## Whodunit

cuchuflete said:
			
		

> I haven't figured out the little blue-white tick business...does this really matter in any substantial way?



No, it doesn't matter at all.    I just wanted to mention it as an oddity, in order to help Mike to be administrator of the most perfect forum.


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## cuchuflete

Whodunit said:
			
		

> No, it doesn't matter at all.    I just wanted to mention it as an oddity, in order to help Mike to be administrator of the most perfect forum.



Dan,
OK, now I can die happy

Part of the attraction of this forum for me is that it has imperfections, just like people!  When the database 'hiccups' or 'burps', some strange things happen to the counters.  It's not really an issue for Mike so much as for the makers of the database software, but I'm sure Mike will have a look at it at some point.

Thanks for being understanding.

C


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