# Why is this message board so \*agonizingly\* slow? **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [March 24, 2003, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-this-message-board-so-agonizingly-slow/163818 "2003-03-24T17:36:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Rusalka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ecd19e/32.png) [@Rusalka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rusalka)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2003, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-this-message-board-so-agonizingly-slow/163818/1 "2003-03-24T17:36:00Z")
I live in Chicago, (which I believe is the same area as the server for this board) and I access this board from two different Chicago access providers, both broadband connections. It pings fine, and the traceroute show no problems, so I don’t think it’s my connection. I sometimes wait several minutes for a message thread to open. It’s so long, I’m surprised my browser doesn’t time out waiting for it. This is a consistent problem. Is anyone else experiencing this? What’s the straight dope? ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2003, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-this-message-board-so-agonizingly-slow/163818/2 "2003-03-24T17:40:01Z")
It’s busy and hamsters can only go so fast. This goes in About the Message Boards. ---
**Author:** ![Tal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/54ee81/32.png) [@Tal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tal)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2003, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-this-message-board-so-agonizingly-slow/163818/3 "2003-03-24T17:49:44Z")
I experience this at times also…i was just wondering about posting a message myself to see if anyone else had the same problem extreemly frustrating but I guess it’s to be expected with a busy board ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2003, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-this-message-board-so-agonizingly-slow/163818/4 "2003-03-24T17:56:21Z")
My take on the SDMB & its patrons: Do you want it fast or do you want it right? ---
**Author:** ![Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/96bed5/32.png) [@Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patty_O_Furniture)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2003, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-this-message-board-so-agonizingly-slow/163818/5 "2003-03-24T18:19:28Z")
Pings are answered by the edge router at the Chicago Reader. This device has nothing better to do than make sure packets go where they’re supposed to go. Your page requests, on the other hand, are asking the web sever to do a lot of grunt work: 1. Validate your user name and password 2. Make sure you’re not a banned member 3. Look for the page you’ve requested 4. Build the page for you 5. Check to see if any posters who responded are on your ignore list, so it can edit them out. 6. Add banners, pictures, ads, etc. 7. Deliver the page to you. And that’s just a view a page. Don’t even _think_ about making a post. ---
**Author:** ![Tal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/54ee81/32.png) [@Tal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tal)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2003, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-this-message-board-so-agonizingly-slow/163818/6 "2003-03-24T18:20:25Z")
both would be nice 😉 ---
**Author:** ![yme](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/35a633/32.png) [@yme](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yme)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2003, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-this-message-board-so-agonizingly-slow/163818/7 "2003-03-24T18:47:31Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Attrayant \* > \*\*Pings are answered by the edge router at the Chicago Reader. This device has nothing better to do than make sure packets go where they’re supposed to go. Your page requests, on the other hand, are asking the web sever to do a lot of grunt work: > > 1. Validate your user name and password > 2. Make sure you’re not a banned member > 3. Look for the page you’ve requested > 4. Build the page for you > 5. Check to see if any posters who responded are on your ignore list, so it can edit them out. > 6. Add banners, pictures, ads, etc. > 7. Deliver the page to you. > > And that’s just a view a page. Don’t even _think_ about making a post. \*\* Connect to an SQL database. Validate _it’s_ password. Validate host address. again, validate your user ID. Find, locate category, thread and post number. Let’s not forget hardware. How fast are the harddrives? Are they ATA’s or SCSI’s? How fast are the ATA’s and/or SCSI’s. What else run’s on the server? Processor speed? Nic speed. ISP speed, for you and the reader. Unix or NT based? And with the amount of users and post here, the tables and files are probably outrageously huge. Any know how big in MB’s, …or GB’s? ---
**Author:** ![Rusalka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ecd19e/32.png) [@Rusalka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rusalka)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2003, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-this-message-board-so-agonizingly-slow/163818/8 "2003-03-24T18:48:18Z")
Yeah but, there are lots of message boards out there, some of them bigger than this one, and I’ve never experienced the consistency of slowness - it doesn’t matter what time of day or night it is - this place is a real hair-puller. I’ve used Yahoo’s boards, and while there are _intermittent_ problems, you can’t count on them _always_ being slow. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![dylan\_73](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecccb3/32.png) [@dylan\_73](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dylan_73)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2003, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-this-message-board-so-agonizingly-slow/163818/9 "2003-03-24T19:00:36Z")
Well, I guess it depends on their hardware. [Slashdot](http://slashdot.org) for instance serves 50 million pages a month according to their 2000 figures (that seems a little low actually, since I’ve noticed that even larger sites can now be slashdotted) but they have 5 load-balancing web servers to deal with it. Hardware details are [here](http://slashdot.org/faq/tech.shtml#te050). Actually, I prefer the slashcode to this vBulletin because I can view threads as nested and when I go to my user page it shows all my recent posts and tells me if there have been any replies. No chance of the SDMB changing over I suppose? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![bibliophage](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bibliophage/32/7615_2.png) [@bibliophage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bibliophage)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2003, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-this-message-board-so-agonizingly-slow/163818/10 "2003-03-24T19:02:10Z")
Since this is a message about this message board, I’ll move this thread to ATMB. bibliophage moderator GQ ---
**Author:** ![toadspittle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c0e974/32.png) [@toadspittle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/toadspittle)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2003, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-this-message-board-so-agonizingly-slow/163818/11 "2003-03-24T19:07:21Z")
You ain’t seen nothing, son. This board is a feisty miracle now, comapred to its performance a few years ago. I honestly can’t say I have any complaints with its current speed. ---
**Author:** ![yme](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/35a633/32.png) [@yme](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yme)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2003, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-this-message-board-so-agonizingly-slow/163818/12 "2003-03-24T19:29:10Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Rusalka \* > \*\*I’ve used Yahoo’s boards, and while there are _intermittent_ problems, you can’t count on them _always_ being slow. 🙂 \*\* Yahoo! is a multi-million dollar business. They’ve probably got T3’s hooked up to their Cisco Gigabit switches and routers. Their server’s probably have like 4 Gigabit nics each. I wouldn’t doubt that they have a couple of Shark DASD’s either. I don’t think the SDMB has all that fancy equipment. ---
**Author:** ![rowrrbazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rowrrbazzle/32/414_2.png) [@rowrrbazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rowrrbazzle)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2003, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-this-message-board-so-agonizingly-slow/163818/13 "2003-03-24T19:36:03Z")
Basically, the SDMB has great content and it’s free, so it’s a victim of its own success. See the well-known design guideline - “Pick only two of these three options: good, cheap, fast.” The subject has been discussed extensively. Search [www.boardreader.com](http://www.boardreader.com) including the keyword “straightdope” for more info. Or use the search function here. [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&postid=3110307#post3110307](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&postid=3110307#post3110307) > [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by jdavis \* > A brand spanking new server was put in place around the middle of November. Since then usage has increased 53% to the point where the new server is once again overwhelmed at times. While I’m not the final decision maker in these regards I’d speculate there will be no new servers for a good 2 to 3 years unless this place starts to generate some substantial revenue. > > I can put in ever more powerful servers and upgrade the bandwidth for the rest of my life and usage would still increase to the point of sucky performance. Every time I’ve done this (3 times now) it’s only been a matter of a few months before we’re maxxed out once again. The basic problem is that the SDMB is free and therefore there is no reason for people not to continuously overutilize it until the point that performance will once again at times suck. When performance starts to suck people stop using it and we reach an uneasy equilibrium point of just how much time people are willing to waste in order to get something for free. Make everyone pay and I can guarantee you there will be no performance problems because a majority of the users will simply leave. Don’t make everybody pay and we’ll have to deal with complaints from now paying members about performance problems they are incurring due to the usage of non-paying members. Don’t ever make anybody pay and at some point the plug simply gets pulled. None of those options look too great… > > We’re working on some type of solution but it’s not happening very quickly. > > Jerry jdavis is our technical god. ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2003, 6:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-this-message-board-so-agonizingly-slow/163818/14 "2003-03-25T06:10:09Z")
So the solution is hooked up to the same hamster wheel? 😉 ---
**Author:** ![lester1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e0b2c6/32.png) [@lester1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lester1)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2003, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-this-message-board-so-agonizingly-slow/163818/15 "2003-03-26T23:29:12Z")
:eek: Must be a big hamster wheel to stretch to the UK! Mind you I am a tad further away so expect some delays 😃