I have a question and not really sure where it should be posted....

Is it a fact that all webhops have to go through New York first, even if my host is in California?


Thanks in advance...

Trying to make sense of a VERY slow running website!

Poor performance can be atributed to a lot of things but you could look at the Internet maps http://www.nthelp.com/maps.htm

Hi and thanks for the link...

I'm not sure I understand as I am a rooky but I am suspect that my issue is database problems...

We've recently switched our site from ss to dv3 as some of our pages were taking an average of 18 painful seconds to load. I've noticed a huge difference now that we have switched to a dedicated server, however, clients from the west coast are still having a lag time upwards of 30 seconds per page....

I was told that since the 9/11 attacks, all hops are first directed to New York City....and was wondering if that was actually fact...

Well I am not sure I can answer your question since its your web. But you should first do some benchmarking so you can determine performance specs for your web. The maps are the backbones for the various parts of the web, though maybe not totally up to date.

Speed across the USA depends on what tier the host server is on because the farther away from the backbone, the slower things get. Then there are hundreds of other variables.

Hey pigtails. Welcome!

1)  Look at the file size of your page in kb. Divide that by the speed of your connection in kb/sec. That will give you the time in seconds that it should take to load.

2)  Give yourself a signature link to your site and let's have a look. The reason might be quite obvious. It usually is.

3)  If it's taking 30 seconds because of the distance across the US, how long do you reckon it'll take, here in Australia? I'm a bit skepticle, Mate. But then, that's me.

Regards,
Laurie.

Is it a fact that all webhops have to go through New York first, even if my host is in California?

no thats not a fact

but internet traffic is funny sometimes

my sites are hosted about 30 miles from where I live

my traffic from my host to my house goes from Birmingham Al -> Washington DC. -> Atlanta, GA ->Pell CIty Alabama

strangely it goes a thousand miles out of its way before it gets here - ha ha ha

as far as the going to New York thing - depending where you live it might be true

if you use windows, try this:  tracert yourhost.com

it'll show you all the stops your traffic makes along the way to get to your host

then login on your host and tracert yourip ( traceroute yourip - if your on Unix/Linux ) - whats even funnier than how far out of the way it goes is that it doesn't necessarily take the same path both ways

There are some logical answers to the question that I have always been curious about and would like to know more about.

A few facts I learned several years ago that I'm sure have been updated somewhat: there are around 7 major hubs in the world. 4 are here in the states. 1. New York, 2. Chicago, 3. Dallas 4. California. The other 3 are in Europe.

It would make little sense for my traffic to go to NY before it got across the city. It would make little sense for all traffic to go to NYC to be rerouted.

Another thing that would not be logical is to direct traffic to a city since and after it suffered a major national catastrophy and infrastructure breakdown.

Interesting to note is the hubs are labeled national security the last I knew of. Hands off, no one like me (for sure) knows the location other than generalities.

If anyone has some reading on the above I would like to be enlightened. I just find it intriguing for night time reading. (daytime is assigned hardcore, lol)

Hello Everyone and thanks for all the feedback....


Been away for a few days, in a rush this a.m. but I'll provide a link to one
page that seems to be giving me some grief.

http://www.iconxs.com/usa-states/ohio.html


We have close to 40 thousand pages in this site, hence switching over to the dv3.

We are in Canada and our host is in California (Media Temple)

Thanks in advance for any input. I am curious how long that page would take to load in Australia.

Pigtails

I live in the UK (not as far away from you as Australia, but a long way never the less),

All my sites are hosted in the US, I have never had speed problems. I use powweb, MT and EV1. Never a problem.

However, the page you cite, above, does take a long time to load.

Here is a speed report for your site;-
http://www.websiteoptimization.com/serv … /ohio.html

I was wondering - are your pages created 'on the fly'? And, if so, do you scrape images/content from other sites in the process or connect to multiple servers in an attempt to make the page?

All such sequential HTTP requests would greatly slow down your site.

If you can't optimise your page generation then I would suggest some sort of server side caching.

Although you have a good semantic HTML structure [using divs, etc] you also have some tables. Nothing wrong with this as your content is 'tabbed'. But - an html table will not display until the closing table tag (</table>) has been found. Optimising this part could also speed up your page load time.

There are a lot of images, so try serving 'interlaced' images so that they appear blurry at first and then refine [an old tactic for speed optimisation not seen very often now]

have fun

Not to mention it wouldn't matter one way or another.

Whether or not you found out all traffic goes through New York there has to be a reason your site is slower than others that is unique to your site. (If everyone did go through New York you're on the same plane that everyone else is)

Extra hops adds milliseconds, your page's problem isn't a couple extra milliseconds.

We'd need to know what you are doing to build those pages every time.

I notice from your site's response header that the site is hosted on Apache 2 with PHP 4.  Though this configuration can be run on a Windows server, it's more likely a Linux or OpenBSD based server; is this correct?

I'm not sure what DV3 is, but you said you were using SS (SQL Server?).  DV3 isn't familiar to me as a Linux based database server, (those are usually MySQL or PostgreSQL) and SQL Server is Microsoft.  This brings me to the question of is your database hosted on the same server as your web page?  If not, that would be a major factor in the delays.

WOW!


I come back to all these great replies.....Thanks....

I can't answer alot of these questions as I am not a programmer...

But I can tell you that we have 2 databases iconxs.com and iconxs.ca

We have little trouble with the .ca ...the speed is pretty good since we moved to the dedicated server.

How I build a page you ask?

I grab the link and logo, and enter it into the database.....It's that simple....

I have copied this entire thread and will have the pro's look further into this.

Anything over 10 seconds(load time) is purely unacceptable...


Appreciate all your time and comments.


Thanks a bunch!

P.S.

If any of you want your sites listed FOR FREE, fire me off a link, and I'll place you
within your city or under a category...

tammy@iconxs.com

i get 19.286 seconds, and im in South Africa... i reckon your problem is database driven. Your page size is only 146kb. My home page is 396kb and takes 3.5 seconds to load. It aint the internet thats targeting your pages...

You said you moved to a dedicated server?  the .ca is there im guessing... and it works fine because its on the smae server. Where is the .com site hosted? why dont you try rerouting the .com straight to the .ca? That should sort out the problem quickly enough. i have .net .org .info all linked to .co.za and it makes no difference to loading time.

Hey Ryan,

Thanks for the reply.

Both the sites are hosted with Media Temple in California.
We seem to be having a few more problems with the database since we switched to the dedicated server.

I've noticed throughout the site, the database really doesn't like apostrophe's...it replaces them with "Ao"
or something like that. That's a new problem along with the search feature not working (not updating anything
we've added in the past 2 months).

The .ca's speed is acceptable. And the only thing I can wrap my mind around is that the .com is 3 times the size of the .ca.


???!!!

FYI - I think using 10 seconds as your baseline is a bit much.

I think the acceptable limit is more like 4-5 seconds, and that's from click to done on the users screen, which puts the build time at less than a couple seconds.  I don't remember where I saw it but supposedly users will move on to another site if the pages take anymore then 5 seconds to be done.

You're going to have to give us a peek "under the hood" if you want some real help. It could be many many things. Also if you want to add my site to yours that would be sweet It's in my signature (and for the record builds in like .25 seconds)

I realize your people may have put some good money into that database, but have they considered using MySQL that's probably already loaded on the Media Temple servers?

Hi Steven,

Yes, I do believe we were originally and still are....(MySQL)

Vita,

I agree and have read it over and over that anything over 4-6 seconds, and you'll be losing customers.

I'm saying 10 seconds is far better than the 30 we were experiencing....

Here's a quote from the programmer....(who is wonderful btw) Just MIA right now *sigh*

"The site IS still a bit slow.  I've done some exploratory research into the code and I've found the culprit.  The system is slowing down because of the rotating "top link".  As each page is viewed, for every link that is loaded, the system drills down to it's youngest child category and looks for links marked for the top, if it finds one, it reports it back.  So for each link, it takes about 1-3 seconds; multiply that by 30 links and you get the idea.

I'm working on coming up with some solutions that allow us to retain the rotating link feature without the slow down"


Make sense to anyone?



I will add your site gladly, tell me where you'd like to be placed. Any particular city?
Perhaps under entertainment or Internet? Just don't asked to be placed on "Page 3" *smiles*

Let me know!

I don't know how many people here Subscribe to Site Reference's Newsletter but I do.

And one Newsletter last month really caught my attention. It was all ICONXS.
I wanted so badly to email these guys and show them that what they were talking about was IconXs.

Here's a brief excerpt.

Local Search - the next big player in search engine marketing.
by Scott Salwolke

Local search is still in its infancy, but it soon could be a major component for search engine optimization. Some estimate that as many as one in three searches are for local business. For it connects with a more targeted market, one actively looking for services and products. And it impacts effects Fortune 500 companies’ as much as small mom and pop stores.

ReMax is a real estate agency with offices in 63 countries. Yet, how does it benefit from being ranked in the top 10 for the term real estate? More likely it would benefit from being highly ranked for phrases such as Denver Real Estate or San Diego Real Estate agent. After all it’s in the local markets that people are looking for homes or real estate agents.

The same goes for restaurant chains. Appearing in the top 10 for restaurant will not likely bring patrons into the Olive Garden. But ranking in the top 10 for Des Moines, IA restaurant could bring in customers. After all, the person performing this search is either hungry or looking to go out.

**********

Like WOW......WOW.....
Knowing our database search feature is and was currently not working properly I couldn't send them to it...


However, here are the two links....for his specific search in that article.....


http://www.iconxs.com/usa-states/iowa/d … vices.html

http://www.iconxs.com/usa-states/iowa/d … otels.html


I don't think that Scott Salwolke would read this particular thread, but WOW he sure banged it out.
We've printed his Newsletter  and show it off proudly.




http://www.site-reference.com/articles/ … eting.html



***Edited to add the link to the Newsletter

Most of us involved with my site are in Eau Claire, WI. However, you can list it however best fits your site.

What rotating link is he referring to? 1-3 seconds for what I assume is a recursive search through one table seems a bit high.

What you could do, if it came to it, is let the page load without the slow parts and use ajax to fill in the slow things when they are done.