Usually around 12 noon Pacific time, there seems to be a period of “ionization blackout”, if you will, on the board. Links either take forever to get to, or the browser just bogs down completely.
Is this regularly scheduled maintence time or something? Would I be smart to avoid the board at certain times to avoid annoying hanging like this?
That’s just the time when a lot of folks are online, posting from work. The board handles these rush times a lot better now than it used to, thanks to the incomparable jdavis and team, but there’s still a noticeable impact on performance. If you can do so, that’s a good time to avoid, but of course, many folks don’t have much choice, having no Internet at home. Aside from stopping everyone else from doping at that time, there’s unfortunately not really much that can be done about it.
I’m in that blackout zone right now, 12:20 PDT, and yes, it is very slow. Thing lighten up at 2pm, when the East goes into rush hour commute, so you might try back then.
It’s 12:35pm Pacific and no problems here.
Fridays tend to be slower than other work-days, SDMB-wise.
Generally, I’ve found that the slow-down begins around noon Eastern and ends around 4:00 PM Eastern.
This sort of makes sense- at noon Eastern, most East Coast dopers are hitting their lunch break (and thus maybe posting more) while West Coast dopers are arriving at work (and thus start posting); at 4:00 PM Eastern, East Coast dopers are starting to leave work, and West Coast dopers are done with lunch (and thus generally have less spare time to post).