ccgi - slow response

[#1]

Hi, have noticed occasional slow and erratic response from my website running on the new ccgi server. Not consistently, sometimes it is perfect (and fast) but then can lapse into really sluggish response. Has anyone else noticed this - should I raise a ticket?

[#2]

Yes, I have noticed exactly the same since getting my Wordpress blog up and running. I thought initially that this was a DNS problem but not so. I used Firebug in Firefox To analyse this and when everything runs normally it shows
DNS lookup - 1 or 2 ms
Connecting - 12 to 16ms
Waiting - 400 to 700ms  (I don't know what it's waiting for presumeably for the server to be ready!)
When it all goes wrong the waiting time goes off the scale, as high as 1m 23s in one case but everything else stays the same.
I'm afraid I don't know what these figures signify but it appears completely random I have had slow connections at all times of the day. It is very annoying as most of my site is on the home pages server, which seems OK all the time, with links to a blog on the CCGI. It somewhat spoils the browsing experience having to wait  (sometimes) for the blog to load up when the rest of the site runs at a good speed.
Cheers
John

[#3]

I think there was a problem connecting to the mysql servers this morning.
Gabe

[#4]

Hi Gabe
Yes, waiting for the SQL server could be a cause but this problem has been apparent to me for at least three weeks now. I have no idea what it was like before the CCGI server upgrade as I didn't have a site up then. It would be interesting to know if this was something that only happens to sites using the SQL database ie Wordpress, Drupal and the like. It might narrow the cause down a bit. Is there any way to measure the SQL server response time?
Cheers
John

[#5]

Hi Guys,
I have been building a very comprehensive site using Joomla & Virtuemart for the past 3 months now and I would have to agree that the CGI servers are extremely erratic on an hour by hour basis.
Following the "crash" when PHP5 came online, everything was noticably faster for a few days, but it has since lapsed back into a situation where one minute a page will appear in 2-3 seconds, and then on the next click of the mouse it can be 30-45 seconds for a page to appear.
There does not appear to be (in my case) any correlation between the loading time and the page types - once the "lag" kicks in, it can take as long to load a page with simple text content as it does to select a range of products from the catalogue section. And then as previously mentioned, the next click (a heavy page which you expect to be slower) appears almost instantly again.
I have spent many many hours working on this daytimes/evenings & weekends both from home and at the office (both fed by PN ADSL) and the lag can be apparent at both locations at totally random times of the day/week.
I appreciate that everything written here doesn't really answer any questions or get us any closer to discovering a potential cause, but I decided to add my thoughts as it is something that has been frustrating me for a number of weeks as well
Hopefully someone out there will pick up on the thread and check it out for all of us?

[#6]

Anyone got an idea about this? It is really becoming somewhat annoying. Perhaps a Plusnet Staff member might have something to add!
Cheers
John

[#7]

I have to agree with John, the problem is still very apparent on a daily basis and does not seem to be getting any better, or have any pattern to it.
Having recently "released" the site that I have just built to the general populus, we have obviously been receiving a lot of positive feedback from colleagues and customers on the new site.
However, without exception, the only negative feedback received has been related to the performance of the site:
"Slow to load"
"Erratic performance"
"Great one minute and then almost frozen the next"
And so on........
Even the performance stats from Google Webmaster tools rate page loading times as "88% slower than other similar sites"
But then, you click on something 10 seconds later, and the same page is there at lightning speed....
As John said..... Somewhat annoying

[#8]

Well I started this thread about a month ago now, and still no change - response times on my web pages are still erratic, some pages will load straight off and other times we just sit and wait ... don't want to think how this might affect my site visitors - I wouldn't hang around on a site that takes too long to load.
I might add I don't have anything too complex - mainly html with some basic php. The frustrating thing is the same page will sometimes load instantly (even with refresh) and other times it's just spinning cursor so I don't know where to start to see what features, if any, are causing the holdup.

[#9]

Quote from: Cign

Is there any way to measure the SQL server response time?

I had just checked the response via phpmyadmin at mysql.plus.net, to exclude anything associated with ccgi. At the same time, a straight html page and a simple phpinfo script on ccgi were not hanging. Are you guys also seeing latency with static content and non-mysql scripts?
Gabe

[#10]

Hi Gabe,
I had thought it might be an sql response issue as well, but although I don't have any static content on my site, there are 3 or 4 pages running simple scripts that don't utilise the sql server and they also suffer from the same latency as the rest of the site.
Basically, when the site is non-responsive and slow, it apllies to all and any pages irrespective of size or content, and then in the next breath the whole site can be running as you would expect and hope it would.
I am checking and testing this on an extremely frequent basis (as I am constantly working on it) and I can't say that I have spotted a pattern to it as yet.
For example, I checked our site last night not long after midninght when you would expect that the "rush-hour" traffic would be diminished, and it took in excess of 40 seconds for the home page to complete loading.
Two minutes later and I was getting page response times of 3-4 seconds....

[#11]

Might be worth putting some code in to display the server IP address at the foot of the page to see if it's a particular one of the ccgi servers.

[#12]

phpinfo displays $_ENV["SERVER_ADDR"]
Gabe

[#13]

I don't know whether this helps but I have been using Firebug to analyse the page load times. The delay is always at the first point of loading the page ie the first part of the page or the first call to the site in my case www.cign.net once this call has been dealt with Firebug shows each subsequent part of the page load item by item ie calls to CSS files, JS scripts, images etc. there never appears to be any delay in any of the individual items that make up the page.
Edit:  However I have just realised that all the fancy PHP and SQL that make up the Wordpress page will be in this first call to build the page and then all the other bits are loaded as standard HTML so probably not much of a clue here (sorry).
Firebug further breaks down the loading sequence for each item and when running at a normal speed it shows something like:
DNS Lookup - 0
Connecting - 0
Blocking - 2ms
Sending - 0ms
Waiting - 1.29s
Receiving - 22ms
When the page loads slowly the only item that shows a change is the "Waiting" which has been over 1minute.
I have attached (at least I hope I have!) a screengrab of the Firebug output for a "normal" page load, the inset box at the top right shows the further detail for the first item on the list viz: www.cign.net.
I have to admit that I have very little idea as to what most of this means but it might help someone!
Cheers
John

[#14]

Is it just me, or has everything been "ok" for the last 3 or 4 days ?
Don't want to jinx it or anything, but had to ask...........

[#15]

Fraid not still running between "stunned slug"  and "cheetah" speed! I just connected to my Wordpress blog and it took about 50seconds the next go took just 1second.
Looks like you jinxed it