onthebeach

I live in the UK and have been playing with the CP premium shop for a couple of months.

I notice that on a very regular basis CP pages with multiple images don't download. The browser hunts between subdomains (images1, images2 etc.) for ages before finally giving up. Usually the length of time it tries one subdomain is in the tens of seconds, so overall it can be several minutes before this finally happens.

Whilst it's doing this no other CP tab will download CP images either, though CP text and images from 'my' server will download.

This happens with the publicly visible shop pages and the privately visible subsection pages.

Refreshing a page continuously gets me nowhere. I usually have to switch off my router and restart it before it works. Sometimes I have to do this twice. Everything then works perfectly for a while before eventually seizing up again (maybe twenty minutes, maybe an hour).

Other websites will function perfectly fine -ebay, amazon, google etc.

Has anyone else noticed this problem? It was mentioned briefly once on the CP forum but there was little interest, so presumably it isn't a common problem.

Strangely, there are very few problems towards the evening / late night / early morning. If the CP servers are 8 hours behind UK time (as the forums are) then it indicates that there are NO problems when the CP servers are at their busiest, but that there are problems when the CP servers are at their least busy.

I can only think of a few things:

• My ISP is somehow messing up
• The CP servers are somehow messing up
• My browsers (FF and IE) are somehow messing up

My only suggestion at the moment, not really knowing what the cause is, is that the subdomain servers holding the thumbnails for multiple-image pages should be set to time-out after a shorter time.

On an unrelated issue pages often hang on Google Analytics. I've found this on my own websites, so on a site as busy as CP I'm surprised that they use this service. :-)

I'd be very interested in other people's experiences.

 

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Timofei

onthebeach,

Try pinging or running a tracert to CP from a site other than your ISP.

Tracert - The managed connection

That would help you diagnose where the bandwidth problem is.

http://www.tracert.com/trace_exe.html

Place CP's IP into the multiple trace field and check off which servers you want to run the trace against.

Or you can use your command prompt in windows (start, run type CMD and enter) then type ping -A (CP's IP) and hit enter and look at the speed the TTL or time to live and see if it is stable number.

 

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onthebeach

Thanks Timofei

I followed your suggestion and did a traceroute from various points around the globe, including the UK. The pings show everything hunky dory but the images are still hanging (in today's case from images3.cafepress.com)

Does that mean it's my ISP?

And presumably even if I have problems, customers in the US are unlikely to?

Thanks again!

 

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Timofei

Quote: Originally Posted by onthebeach Thanks Timofei I followed your suggestion and did a traceroute from various points around the globe, including the UK. The pings show everything hunky dory but the images are still hanging (in today's case from images3.cafepress.com) Does that mean it's my ISP? And presumably even if I have problems, customers in the US are unlikely to? Thanks again!

Your welcome onthebeach,

The time outs could originate from any point as you pointed out other sites loaded quickly.

It could be service at that time, DNS issues, or your local ISP throttling bandwidth. They all do it at some point.

What flavor broadband do you have?

Tim

 

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onthebeach

Er - reasonable. Basic broadband. Like you say, it may be my ISP throttling bandwidth, though technically it's unlimited. I pay a reasonable amount for it, so it's not a dodgy 'free' service. Tesco internet.

Trouble is, it's every time. But it does seem to be after I've been to a few pages with multiple images on, or refreshed a page a few times.

 

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Timofei

Quote: Originally Posted by onthebeach Er - reasonable. Basic broadband. Like you say, it may be my ISP throttling bandwidth, though technically it's unlimited. I pay a reasonable amount for it, so it's not a dodgy 'free' service. Tesco internet. Trouble is, it's every time. But it does seem to be after I've been to a few pages with multiple images on, or refreshed a page a few times.

Just for fun did you try emptying your IE or FF cache and reload the CP site to see if it is still crawling or timing out?

What OS do you have and at what service pack?

Did you try a third browser like Google's Chrome as a control test?

Tim

 

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onthebeach

First I loaded a bookmarked page with multiple images in FF. No problems. Refreshed it. Partially loaded. Refreshed it again. Partially loaded.

Then I loaded the same page in IE. Partially loaded.

Then I loaded the same page in Chrome. Partially loaded.

Each browser partially loaded different images.

Then I moved to Google SERPS, cleared cache for FF, went back to bookmarked page in FF. Page hung on stats.cafepress.com, partially loaded images.

I refreshed IE, and it partially reloaded. (Different images to FF.) So still in IE then I moved to Google SERPS, cleared IE cache, went back to original page and it reloaded instantly. I was so surprised I cleared the cache again and repeated, and then cleared the cache once more, shut down IE and restarted it. Each time it reloaded all images fast and completely.

I don't like Google Chrome so I didn't bother figuring out how to delete Chrome cache.

Does this mean that it's a cache issue? I use FF - so how do I get FF to behave?

Win XP SP 2, latest updates, latest FireFox, fast machine with theoretical 4GB ram

Thanks for your help, by the way!

 

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Timofei

I don't fall in love with browsers just whatever gets the job done.

As they have to emulate may different type of environments they can be pretty buggy sometimes. If IE works I would stick with it.

You are welcome.

Tim

 

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