We have a BIG problem with the website server

[s2hotdog]

Top up sent

Steve

[Coastcard]

I'm not a teccy, just pay the bills. Have an option that may help.

When we subscibed to BT Business Broadband, for an extra £10 a month we had a fixed IP address (In English - enables you to direct traffic and host your own site). Don't know about Php requirements or how big a pipe you can get from BT, but maybe another avenue. Appreciate it's more maintenance work and would need a Forum engineered security device to prevent thieving chavs from nicking it.

FWIW - Rackspace were a company we were very impressed with as well.

- Leaves reaching for virtual wallet -

[smo]

I'm not a teccy, just pay the bills. Have an option that may help.

When we subscibed to BT Business Broadband, for an extra £10 a month we had a fixed IP address (In English - enables you to direct traffic and host your own site). Don't know about Php requirements or how big a pipe you can get from BT, but maybe another avenue. Appreciate it's more maintenance work and would need a Forum engineered security device to prevent thieving chavs from nicking it.

FWIW - Rackspace were a company we were very impressed with as well.

- Leaves reaching for virtual wallet -

"home hosting" is the worst possible way of doing it, no ADSL line has an upspeed capability of that needed for a site like this (or any site really). As i said earlier, i can help with hosting contacts if the admins want.

[geoffbeaumont]

I'm not a teccy, just pay the bills. Have an option that may help.

When we subscibed to BT Business Broadband, for an extra £10 a month we had a fixed IP address (In English - enables you to direct traffic and host your own site). Don't know about Php requirements or how big a pipe you can get from BT, but maybe another avenue. Appreciate it's more maintenance work and would need a Forum engineered security device to prevent thieving chavs from nicking it.

As smo said, we need way, way more bandwidth than ADSL is cabable of - any line suitable for hosting the forum on would cost a lot more than any of the hosting packages we're looking at. On top of that we'd need to purchase a suitable server (about £1000), an uninteruptible power supply for it, a backup solution (tape drive + set of tapes + sort out secure offsite storage for the tapes). The server would need to be kept somewhere cool and dry and out of earshot (powerful servers make nearly as much noise as vacuum cleaners) and secure (we've got about 2800 people's personal details in the database...).

We'd either need a duplicate server ready to go into service if needed, or accept that if the primary server died the forums would be down for at least days while we waited for a new one, and we'd have no support to call on so if anything went wrong we'd be down until one of us could get to the server and sort it out (we've all got day jobs and lives, so that could at times be days too).

Realistically, any form of hosting it ourselves is out of the question

FWIW - Rackspace were a company we were very impressed with as well.

I have dealings with them through work - they're one of the alternatives we considered along with a few other reputable companies, but none of them would work out massively cheaper for what we need, and we'd lose support for the actual forum software by moving away from Invision. That's actually quite important, because when something goes wrong and Trev and I are uncontactable the other (non techy) admins can raise a support ticket and get Invision to deal with it.

"home hosting" is the worst possible way of doing it, no ADSL line has an upspeed capability of that needed for a site like this (or any site really). As i said earlier, i can help with hosting contacts if the admins want.

Thanks, smo - I think we're settled on staying with Invision for the next year, but if want to PM me we're keeping an open mind about the best place for the forum to be in the future (and always will).

[pugwash]

i use a lot of centrally hosted apps in my shops- i run citrix on the terminals that connects to hosted servers in the US.

These servers have up to 10,000 concurrant connections and are housed in fully redundant, multi site, nuclear proof unit- just found some blurb from the Co (which is pretty much the same for most hosting companies)

"The Center7 facility offers standard-based network redundancies, redundant Air Conditioning, redundant power with 10,000 gallons of Diesel fuel and 24-hour onsite security. Viawest provides network and infrastructure redundancy. SPOT Business Systems's application server farm is powered by Dell, Cisco and EMC equipment that delivers the reliability and performance you rely on. "

[geoffbeaumont]

These servers have up to 10,000 concurrant connections and are housed in fully redundant, multi site, nuclear proof unit- just found some blurb from the Co (which is pretty much the same for most hosting companies)

Maybe it's deriliction of duty...but if nuclear war breaks out I'm unlikely to be worrying about whether the forum is still up and running...

[pugwash]

in those circumstances at least we might have a good excuse for all the vapour trucks around.

Government annoncement:

"in the event of nuclear attacks, ensure you keep your forums alive and well"

[Coastcard]

Sorry, I didn't want to go into all the nitty gritty about hosting in my post to avoid boring people. Just high level suggestion as not sure what requirements were .

[white90]

Coastcard

you are welcome to ask any questions all advice is greatfully received.

It also allows Geoff/Trev to explain the needs for the site.

I for one have little understanding of these, but do understand finances etc.

Longer term we can look at all options for hosting, short to medium term we

are wanting to secure the site onto a Dedicated Server for the best ££ we can,

then we can look into ongoing donations perhaps small amounts monthly, from members

wanting to give, then sales of various items, DVDs Stickers/Clutch forks etc etc

Tony

[nz90]

Coastcard

you are welcome to ask any questions all advice is greatfully received.

It also allows Geoff/Trev to explain the needs for the site.

I for one have little understanding of these, but do understand finances etc.

Longer term we can look at all options for hosting, short to medium term we

are wanting to secure the site onto a Dedicated Server for the best ££ we can,

then we can look into ongoing donations perhaps small amounts monthly, from members

wanting to give, then sales of various items, DVDs Stickers/Clutch forks etc etc

Tony

Hi Tony,

Cheque's in the post... honestly!!

Oh, it also has Mark's timing kit bit included with it - just found it today. Should be worth another tenner from him!!

David.

[HoSS]

donation sent.

personally i would rather have a system of monthly or yearly payments. mainly because i'm pretty forgetful

certian forums have a 'forum sponsor' badge shown for each contributor. I'm not suggesting a 2 tier membership, but it kind of reminds others to do likewise...

[Les Henson]

We are considering a monthly direct debit thing with PayPal. A couple of quid a month (or whatever) is a very good idea and within the scope of most people that would like to contribute financially to this website.

Les.

[Ivan]

Good idea Les. I'll be up for that.

Ivan

[FridgeFreezer]

Me too - as has been said it's cheaper than a mag subscription and I find myself just looking at the pictures in TOR, the rest of the comics aren't even worth picking up anymore. Probably wouldn't bother with TOR if it didn't drop through my door every month...

Oh and if it helps I have an old Compaq server in my cupboard (don't ask)

[Mo Murphy]

I'd be happy with monthly direct debit via paypal too.

Mo

[tpb]

The problem is not bandwidth or disk quota, it's resource usage due to the number of active concurrent users on your forums.

Your forum has too much traffic to suit shared hosting. We generally limit the number of concurrent users to around 80, your site frequently reaches 100+, which is what's causing the problem.

Generally we would reccomend at least Dedicated 2 for a site of your size, which is the Pentium 4 server,

I'm on the system administration team for an ISP here in Calgary. I've dealt with shared hosting environments before, and I can honestly say that I've seen this exact problem come up a number of times in the past for some of our clients.

For the non-geeks, here's what's going on:

Shared hosting is only profitable because the resources are being oversold. Typically, a small forum doesn't have people using it all day, every day. So, on average, there are (let's say) 0.5 people using the forum at any given time. That means that the ISP can sell the same system to another group that has roughly the same usage of 0.5 people using it at any time. In the end, they sold the same hardware to 2 people because each was only using it half the time. This is a VERY simplified explanation - there's a lot more to consider when doing this sort of math, but you get the idea.

When one group's popularity increases to the point where they are using most of the resources (like a popular forum) then other clients start to notice a degradation in service. Essentially, the popular forum isn't "sharing" the resources nicely with the other people using the same hardware.

Current Stats:

49 user(s) active in the past 15 minutes

Most users ever online was 484 on Mar 24 2007, 08:00 PM

I haven't seen your usage data, and even if I had, there is a fair bit of guesswork that goes in to sizing a machine to a web site.

Questions to have answered before commiting to anything:

1) Buy your own machine?

1a) will they host it if you do?

1b) does it need to be rackmountable?

1c) how much will physical space (in rack units) cost?

1d) will you have physical access to it for maintenance and repairs?

1e) how much does power and cooling cost?

1f) what is the cost of bandwidth and Internet connectivity?

1g) who does firewalling?

1h) if they do maintenance, how much will it cost?

2) They supply a machine?

2a) will they maintain the hardware?

2b) who is responsible for backups?

2c) is the hardware redundant in any way?

2d) will they maintain the software (security updates, etc)?

Those are just off the top of my head. If you have any questions, drop me a line. I'd be happy to help out.

[Coastcard]

Oh and if it helps I have an old Compaq server in my cupboard (don't ask)

We have something in common . Mine has a DLT tape drive as well.

Plus,...

2 x Nokia IP530 ISP grade firewalls

2 x Cisco Switches

1 x Cisco router

Again, don't ask... I am still receiving therapy

[smo]

We have something in common . Mine has a DLT tape drive as well.

Plus,...

2 x Nokia IP530 ISP grade firewalls

2 x Cisco Switches

1 x Cisco router

Again, don't ask... I am still receiving therapy

MMMMmmmm, IP530's and Cisco routers/switches.....nice Kit

[V8RRC]

We are considering a monthly direct debit thing with PayPal. A couple of quid a month (or whatever) is a very good idea and within the scope of most people that would like to contribute financially to this website.

Les.

Sounds like a good idea to me! I would be happy to go with that

[David Sparkes]

Just a comment from a user who considers himself mainly 'inactive'.

I note the comments from Invision always refer to Concurrent users.

My ISP logs me off every 24 hours, whether the PC has been Hibernated within that period or not.

However, once logged into this forum, and some other LR forums in the same multi-tabbed Browser window, I tend to stay logged in for several days, even though I don't actually read postings every day.

So, if the forum invoked a disconnection every 24 hours, I would not be sitting there as an idle but concurrent user. It's true that if disconnected like this I may actually not bother to visit more than once a week, but who is the loser in that case? Possibly me, but hardly the Forum, or even other users, considering how infrequently I am active.

Those who are both more regular and active may object to 'logging in' every 24 hours, but in the case of my ISP it's just a matter of typing in my password, my user name is automatically entered. IE, It's not an onerous task to re-activate the account.

Reducing Concurrent users by elimination of the idle ones may not be a long term solution, but might buy you time at a very minimal cost.

There is an assumption that the software has the facility to limit the amount of time a user is continuously logged on, so in this respect my comments are risky.

Regards.

[Guest MJG]

We are considering a monthly direct debit thing with PayPal. A couple of quid a month (or whatever) is a very good idea and within the scope of most people that would like to contribute financially to this website.

Les.

Fine by me.......

[fisha]

Although I can wield a set of spanners I wouldn't be comfortable giving tech info to others incase it was wrong and it cost people in repairs from my rubbish advice.

. . . you can just go back and edit your original post . . . .

[Guest WALFY]

Fisha

Good idea. Hadn't thought of that. Will try it sometime in the near future. You have all been warned

[JSG]

Whatever you do DON'T go down the sponsorship / magazine route - EVER.

Independent is the way to go - it's one of the reasons ORRP has been so successful.

[geoffbeaumont]

Oh and if it helps I have an old Compaq server in my cupboard (don't ask)

What spec? Always useful to know these things

So, if the forum invoked a disconnection every 24 hours, I would not be sitting there as an idle but concurrent user. It's true that if disconnected like this I may actually not bother to visit more than once a week, but who is the loser in that case? Possibly me, but hardly the Forum, or even other users, considering how infrequently I am active.

Hi David,

The web doesn't work like that - a conection to a web server isn't continuous, each time you request a page (or for that matter, each individual image on a page) it's a separate connection to the server. The server keeps track of each browser that's connecting to it with a 'session' on the server, and each request from your browser is linked to the session by a bit of information called a cookie which is passed by the browser each time. The 'concurrent users' referrers to the number of these sessions on the go at any one time. If you don't request anything from the server within a set time (usually 20 minutes) then the server abandons your session.

The reason you appear to stay logged in is that you have another cookie (they're saved as small text files) saved on your computer which identifies you to the website and logs you in automatically.

Apologies to anyone who's eyes just glazed over...

For the record, we're often running at around 100 concurrent users, Invision reckon their shared hosting can cope with up to 80 per site, which I reckon is actually pretty good. When we were on my account at Canaca the site was regularly falling over and got me shut down at only 15.