Why so slow?

[rov1200]

Why does it take ages to call up a topic on Answerbank and what needs to be done to improve the situation?

[MWB]

It's maddening, isn't it!

But sometimes it faster, then a bit slower, then dead slow, etc, etc.

What can be done?

[Gromit]

Apparently they are working on new code for a new version of answerbank. Unfortunately, they have been saying that for years, and bugs that have been here for years still go unfixed.

[VHG]

I dont work for answerbank, and have no idea of the actual problem, but here is my comment on it.

Like many web sites that store lots of data (Amazon, BBC etc) there are two main parts of it.

There is the "front end" which is the bit we see - the web page, the topics, the adverts, all the text on the screen etc.

Then there is the "back end". This is normally a relational database.

When you select a topic the "front end" has to go to the "back end" and say "give me all the entries for topic xzy"

This ovbiously takes some time. On a powerful system it could take less than a second.

But suppose 100 people are all asking the "back end" to do something at the same time.

This will obvously slow down the system and instead of taking a second it can take 5 seconds, or 10 seconds or whatever.

The more users you have the slower the system gets.

There are ways round this.

Get a faster server, get a better database, redesign the web site, spread the database over more than one server and so on.

None of these are quick, easy or cheap and all cost money.

I have no idea if that is why there are problems, but it may help you understand why there is no "quick fix".

[VHG]

To give you an idea how expensive providing a fast system is think about Google.

MILLIONS of people do Google searches every day (maybe every second) but the response is very quick.

How do they do that?

Well they have THOUSANDS of severs (individual computers) all over the world.

Nobody knows how many, and Google wont say (for security reasons) but it is estimated they have between 200,000 and 500,000 servers world wide.

Can you imagine the cost of all that technology.

Not sure how many servers answerbank has, but for each server they buy that is more money.

[Gromit]

It may be worth checking your Adobe Flash plugin is up to date. Answerbank has a lot more adverts these days that are flash animated and they are what loads last when I go to a page.

[fo3nix]

It boils down to the site being poorly designed.

I have no idea what system it's running (ASP on IIS I think), but whatever, it's slow because it's been poorly designed.

There's nothing you can do about it, it's up to the guys that maintain the site. It's nothing more than a load of forums, so should be simple to run.

You don't need tons of hardware like load-balancers and all kinds of servers to run a forum.

[rov1200]

Thanks. The general position seems to be their servers. When you think that a server is just a glorified computer and these now cost peanuts I'm surprised they have not increased them to handle the traffic. I sometimes wonder if their software is riddled with viruses and needs better security?