[X] My Assistant

[Bjorn Jonsson]

Has anyone had problems accessing www.unmannedspaceflight.com recently ? Since last weekend I haven't been able to access it from home but if I use a computer at work (as I'm obviously doing now ;-) ) there are no problems.

This is the only website I'm having any problems accessing so this is really weird.

[djellison]

That would make a lot of sense. UMSF is indeed entirely DB driven, PHP, SQL and Apache all have to work to serve each page. If for some reason you have a local cached version perhaps with your ISP or work network - that would 'break' it.

Doug

[dvandorn]

I've had some occasional issues with UMSF not refreshing well (or at all quickly), but it's been a while since I've had a really hard time staying connected. And when I do have a problem, it's usually a SQL error and not a DNS lookup issue that's killing me.

However, I'm seeing a more subtle behavior issue lately. Keep in mind, I'll often start reading posts here, go off and do other things, and come back to read more posts -- all without logging in or out of the site.

Now we all know that when you first bring the site up, the forum and sub-forum icons show you if there are unread posts in those fora. When you get into the topic lists, of course, there is a small red flag next to individual threads if they contain unread posts.

When I leave the site up but unattended for a while (especially when displaying a given thread or sub-forum topic list) and then go back to the main forum list, the forum icons reset to an "all read" status, even if I haven't gone into those fora during this visit. I end up checking the last-post timestamps at the forum levels to see if there might be unread posts out there that I haven't seen.

It's not a huge inconvenience (if I didn't care about keeping my reading organized into fora, I could just look at the recent posts lists). But it is a glitch in the proper operation of the Invision board software, so I thought I'd mention it.

-the other Doug

[helvick]

When I leave the site up but unattended for a while (especially when displaying a given thread or sub-forum topic list) and then go back to the main forum list, the forum icons reset to an "all read" status, even if I haven't gone into those fora during this visit.  I end up checking the last-post timestamps at the forum levels to see if there might be unread posts out there that I haven't seen.

I'm seeing something similar. I generally tend to use the "View New Posts" button to monitor activity and it has worked pretty reliably up until recently. I've noticed occassional posts in the past that I missed but over the last week or two I've seen a lot and yesterday I noticed that the list "cleared" almost completely between two sessions even though I hadn't read any of them.

It's not a big deal for me either, more of an inconvenience as you say, but just thought I'd flag it as something I'd noticed.

[Bjorn Jonsson]

I have noticed this as well but it's a minor inconvenience.

The big issue for me is accessing UMSF from home. I seriously doubt it's a caching issue. When 'tracert' ends with star.dnsprotect.com (as in one of the sample traceroute outputs I posted on page 1 in this thread) I can access UMSF from home; when it doesn't I can't access it from home but can access it from work. The tracert output is identical from home and work except for the first few entries.

I wonder if this might be a problem at gig0-1.l3-atl-5.gnax.net [209.51.131.94]

At the moment I cannot access UMSF at home; several hours ago I could. The situation was similar yesterday, a 'window' for a few hours when I could access UMSF from home.

Maybe I should try complaining to my ISP and pretend I have no idea of tracert etc. .

[dvandorn]

This is really sounding like a load balancer issue to me. Your ISP may well be using load balancers to maintain even traffic on its server nodes. If one of those goes a little bad, this is the kind of thing that can happen. And it's hard as hell to track down.

Instead of pretending ignorance of such things, it might be best to simply tell them what you know and inquire as to whether they have been doing any tests on their load balancers.

Also, it's possible that your ISP is using a larger provider's servers, and has limited control over some of the nodes it uses. And that includes load balancing on those nodes. So, that might be a good data point to pin down with them, as well -- if you can.

-the other Doug