NPN "hiccups"

Over the last few months I've noticed that NPN goes on "very slow loading binges" aggravatingly often, as it seems to be doing again right now. I'm not talking about a minor slowdown - it's so slow I usually just quit NPN while it's happening and it often takes many hours to clear up. I've been an active member for almost 5 years and don't remember it ever being such an issue before. Everything else loads at normal speeds, just NPN seems to be slow for me. Then it'll get back to normal for a few days or a week till the next time, which inevitably occurrs.

Is this an issue for anyone else or is it just me? I doubt if it's a problem on my end - the Comcast technician was just here today and everything checked out.

Just wondering...

I've never noticed it. Perhaps Comcast has been getting hacked with DOS attacks? It's been happening to my internet provider (cablevision) who have been very slow to tell the public of this little problem.

In the last month I've signed on at various locations in Washington, Idaho, Utah, Montana, Colorado, California, Oregon, and now Virginia. Never a hiccup or a slow down.

It sure makes me wonder if you have some kind of local issue going on.

I have not noticed any slowdowns either. Maybe it is local to your situation Ron?

Ok, there's three that aren't having the problem. That does tell me it must be on my end. I'll investigate further. Thanks very much for the responses!

No problems for me either. I have a DSL connection, not Comcast.

I see exactly the same issues here in Phoenix on occasion. My browser just sits and waits for data and it takes so long I just abandon NPN and go to any other url (which loads at normal speed). Firefox, Mac OS X 10.5.8. CenturyLink DSL.

For the last month or so when I try to load an NPN page I usually get an error that says Firefox (or any other browser) cannot load or find the page, etc. So I hit reload over and over until it finally loads and often it only partially loads. Sometimes the stylesheet doesn't load and I get weird fonts and link colors. Other times it only loads about half the photos. And still other times it loads normally.

I get this behavior ONLY with NPN. I have no problems with any other site. I've mentioned this to Jim E. but not sure what the cause is. From the responses so far it appears to be limited to the Southwest??

That's what often happens with me also Phillip - I'll eventually get a partial load and then sometimes it will eventually complete the load and sometimes it won't. I haven't seen the weird fonts and colors you mention. It was fine all day today but it started acting up (this time) at about 5:30 this afternoon and it's still going on...

Happens here regularly too. I let it keep loading, go to emails and other things to use the time, then go back to NPN in a few minutes and sometimes it is STILL loading. Occasionally, it freezes altogether and I have to start over. Definitely not only you.
Concast "highest speed" here.
Sandy

I also have had on and off again loading problems, but never slow enough to cause me to quit. Yesterday, it was just slower than normal.

Ron, you are not alone on this - I have received emails from at least one other member having the same issue.

Here from NH, via Comcast, I have no issues conecting to the server in NYC, thus it is not an issue with the server itself. I suspect it is Internet congestion/bottlenecks causing the issue. I would however suggest trying another browser to see if that makes any difference, or try logging in from work or another nearby location.

Please update this thread and let us know what you find!

Thanks for the response Jim. However, since I'm retired (and loving it) your suggestion that I log in "from work" made me shudder...

I'm still having the same issue this morning which makes commenting a huge pain in the patoot. I tried using Safari but the problem persists. When/if I get this figured out I'll definitely report back here.

Ron, I'm now seeing some slowness myself. I have an email in to the server admin to see if he can shed any light on this. I still believe it has to do with massive bandwidth usage on the Internet in general - especially during the holiday season.

I will report back as soon as I learn anything!

I've had periods of that in the past though not specific to NPN. It could be a problem with your computer or your security software.

Speaking of computers, one thing to check. I had similar experiences with two other sites about 6 months ago. On advice of another I cleared the cookies in my machine, and the issues went away immediately. His version was that I had a "cookie war" going on, but he's about as knowledgeable as I am. Not!

On rare occassions I've noticed that NPN is slow to load on IE and Firefox on DSL from home. We have a very high speed connection at my office, so I don't notice any odd occurrences there.

"Cookie Wars" That's good, Hank. It's possible, I suppose, that cookies could cause conflicts trying to load different versions of a page that is cached somewhere on Web. Tossing cookies may be a good thing to try.

It will be interesting to see if there is anything on NPN's server that's causing the issue.

--P

Perhaps due to the fact we are on a side road of the digital highway here, I notice the same thing though not only with NPN. A site that will load quickly on day won't on the next yet opening a link to another site sees it pop right up. It may be, as Jim notes, bottlenecks to servers which varies from day to day.

Jim,

I have the same problems that Ron Dudley is having getting to NPN. Other sites load normally for me when this is happening on NPN.


I did a tracert from here in Salt Lake City just a few moments ago, I'll paste the results below. This information may help your server admin. You can see how many times it times out from here to there.


Microsoft Windows [Version 6.0.6002]
Copyright (c) 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\Users\McPherson>tracert 204.141.84.67

Tracing route to 204.141.84.67 over a maximum of 30 hops

1 2 ms 1 ms 2 ms 192.168.1.1
2 115 ms 342 ms 228 ms 24.2.96.1
3 99 ms 133 ms 145 ms te-5-1-ur08.saltlakecity.ut.utah.comcast.net [68
.85.39.101]
4 58 ms 19 ms 29 ms te-9-4-ar02.saltlakecity.ut.utah.comcast.net [68
.86.180.57]
5 118 ms 253 ms 109 ms te-0-1-0-0-cr01.denver.co.ibone.comcast.net [68.
86.94.109]
6 192 ms 155 ms 165 ms pos-2-13-0-0-cr01.dallas.tx.ibone.comcast.net [6
8.86.86.210]
7 39 ms 39 ms 39 ms pos-0-6-0-0-pe01.1950stemmons.tx.ibone.comcast.n
et [68.86.85.34]
8 37 ms 39 ms 37 ms ix-3-0-1-0.tcore2.DT8-Dallas.as6453.net [206.82.
142.17]
9 37 ms 37 ms 38 ms ae-7.r07.dllstx09.us.bb.gin.ntt.net [129.250.9.1
93]
10 38 ms 38 ms 44 ms ae-6.r20.dllstx09.us.bb.gin.ntt.net [129.250.3.6
6]
11 78 ms 109 ms 95 ms ae-3.r20.asbnva02.us.bb.gin.ntt.net [129.250.3.5
0]
12 125 ms 72 ms 71 ms ae-6.r23.nycmny01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net [129.250.2.8
]
13 77 ms 73 ms 79 ms ae-1.r06.nycmny01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net [129.250.4.1
49]
14 76 ms 74 ms 94 ms ge-1-2.a01.nycmny01.us.da.verio.net [129.250.30.
194]
15 * * * Request timed out.
16 * * * Request timed out.
17 * * * Request timed out.
18 * * * Request timed out.
19 * * * Request timed out.
20 * * * Request timed out.
21 * * * Request timed out.
22 * * * Request timed out.
23 * * * Request timed out.
24 * * * Request timed out.
25 * * * Request timed out.
26 * * * Request timed out.
27 * * * Request timed out.
28 * * * Request timed out.
29 * * * Request timed out.
30 * * * Request timed out.

Trace complete.

This from our server admin;

Hi Jim,

I checked the server and it was running fine. I compressed all of the database files, and did a reboot.. let’s see if that speeds things up. Nothing has changed (location, hardware, software, etc)

David

I did 'tracert' and and got a similar result as Mia. I also did a 'ping' on 204.141.84.67 and got request timeouts. Perhaps the timeouts are likely due to a firewall blocking these commands? NPN is loading just fine.in IE at work.

--P

Jim -

I figure if there's a problem, it will show in Alaska. Ping goes through just fine, not packets lost and a decent if not great 117ms. Traceroute can't get through the firewalls at my ISP; no surprise, a lot of ISPs trap against them these days.

In terms of performance, NPN has been okay for me; occasionally I have to force a reload, but there's been no noticeable degradation.

Which leads me to suspect either corruption/malware attacks on a subset of the domain name servers, or a cookie conflict at the individual nodes. Maybe someone experiencing the problem can clear all of their cookies and report if that resolves it?

Jim DeWitt

I haven't had any trouble, so I decided to do a tracert to see what it said, and lo and behold I got the same results at the same point. Very odd.

15 58 ms 44 ms 45 ms ge-1-1.a01.nycmny01.u
114]
16 * * * Request timed out.
17 * * * Request timed out.
18 * * * Request timed out.
etc.

P.S. And when I posted this I had no problem posting it, even with the above tracert results.

Jim D. - I cleared my cookies earlier this morning and it made no apparent difference.

The problem persisted all morning until I left to go shooting (in bad light) at about 10 AM. Just got home a few minutes ago and the problem seems to have cleared up for now - NPN seems to be running normally again. That's happened before though and then it's just returned. We'll see what happens this time...

Thanks to everyone for your help and advice on this.

Just tried to get to NPN and got this error message. It took 12 reloads before the page loaded. Again, I have no problem with any other site.

hmm.... I'm still on dial-up out here... For me everything is slow!

Maybe it would help if folks got real specific about their setups. I'm using a 2.16 Ghz Macbook Pro2, Intel Core Duo, OS 10.6.3, Firefox 3.6.2, connecting at the moment via wifi to Earthlink.

Back home I'm dialup to ACSAlaska, and who knows how many different systems I've wifi'ed on the road in the last month.

Zero hiccups.

Nothing on my system has changed in the last 3 years. I haven't had the loading problems until the last month or so. When I have problems loading NPN, I have no problems with any other site. Only NPN. When I'm having trouble loading NPN I've tried many sites all over the world and no issues. This tells me it has nothing to do with my computer but is likely a network/routing/server issue.

I'm on an 3.06GHz iMac running OS X 10.7.2. I'm on a DSL connection.

I had one thought, though not related to NPN directly. A while back another site on which I'm a moderator had a dickens of a time with their new software for linking up with Facebook. Some users were hamstrung and some were unaffected. I was one of the unfortunates, and my symptoms matched those describe here. It took conversations between the FB techies and the site tech, along with software mods to resolve it. Now it's clean, but it was a mess for the duration.

Any changes in your arrangements with FB Jim?

Phil, have you tried clearing cookies?

This morning, the site is loading 100% for me - no slow down or delays at all.

Hi Jim,

I always use the Private Browsing mode. In that mode, no cookies are saved, no files are cached, etc. So there is nothing to clear.

At the moment, NPN is coming through just fine! Seems that around 7:00 am, 12 noon, and again around 5-6 pm is when I have the most trouble.

I think it may be Internet terrorists trying to drive us crazy....

Things are still going well on my end. Since yesterday afternoon NPN is functioning normally for me - such a wonderful difference from before. Sure hope it continues and the "hiccup" somehow goes away for good...

Ron, good to hear but I still have no solid explanation other than the usual Internet congestion problems.