Who has been having trouble connecting: Please report.

[Rich Lucibella]

Our web host has been unable to confirm my reports of slowdowns the past two days....don't ask my why. They've finally shut down the Cable and Wireless path and the site seems to be loading much quicker under AT&T.

Please report in here if you were having problems. Also, let us know if those are now resolved. If possible, state your internet provider and geographic location. This will help us in demonstrating that there is, in fact, a problem.

Thanks very much.
Rich Lucibella

[Caeca Invidia Es]

I was, they seem to be gone now. I go through a local provider who is going through alter.net (uunet). Much better now though.

[BobR]

My problems are not with connecting to TFL, it is just that once I get in it takes an inordinate amount of time to download the forums themselves.

I am in Southwest Oklahoma.
My provider is ISP Channel, a cable internet service.

According to NeoTrace, other than the local routers from my site and the local routers to TFL everything else is running on AT&T ITS through Dallas, Atlanta and points east.
I go through a total of 14 nodes.

[jbgood]

I have definitely experienced slowdowns at both connecting to TFL and in loading forums and topics within forums. I am using IE 5.00 and connect via a dial up ISP in Austin, Tx. The ISP is OnRamp.

[Jhp147]

Had quite a bit of problems yesterday, much better today. It would hit the site okay, but download would be very slow and stop at 39% and just sit there. I am on AOL, regular phone line modem. First time I tried a few minutes ago, very slow, then tried again after checking another site and it worked fine.

[Libertarian]

As I mentioned the other day, I am on a ridiculously fast cable connection. I can go to microsoft's FTP site and get 30+ mb in less than 4 minutes. Napster lets me get files from some other users at 140 kb/s. I can connect to all of my favorite sites (TFL included) with no problems. It is once I am on the TFL site the problems begin.

Just now, it took nearly one minute to fully load this topic. This has been the way it has gone since things slowed down a few days ago. I have run trace route tests and pings in a seperate window while I was trying to load one of the topics in a browser window. The trace route times and ping times were very nice with no hang-ups anywhere, yet I was waiting for grass to grow while the TFL page opened.

In short, I had an established route to host with a good path. Yet once inside the site, everything slowed down.

[Dennis]

I'm just north of San Antonio, TX. My ISP is Guadalupe Valley Telephone Cooperative (GVTC).

When I download from TFL, there are long periods of 'nothing'. I don't have the expertise to determine the routing, but I'm not having the same problem with other websites.

[mcneill]

My problems were the same as BobR:
"My problems are not with connecting to TFL, it is just that once I get in it takes an inordinate amount of time to download the forums themselves."

I live in New Braunfels, Texas (Northeast of San Antonio). My service provider is WorldNet@ASE.

Seems to be working OK now.

[TheBluesMan]

I have had slowdowns for the past day or so. I connect through a dial-up ISP in NE Ohio, Bright.net.

It seemed to run in fits and starts, though. It was taking me 2-5 minutes to load a full 25-post thread. Now it seems to be going very quickly again.

[Mikey]

Likewise! I visit several sites daily - TFL, 1911FORUM, AR15, the USPSA site and others. AR15 has always been slow and flakey but TFL has been much worse for the last few days.

I haven't noticed any real problems with the initial connection, perhaps a little slow, but once inside the threads load very, very slowly and sometimes not at all. When they stall you can sometimes back out and try again with better results.

All other sites are running as always. Only TFL has this obvious problem.

My ISP is http://www.ficom.net in Tullahoma, TN but I also access at work through http://www.sverdrup.com with similar results.

Mikey

[Rich Lucibella]

Thanks guys-
That's the type of info we're looking for. Keep it coming. It truly helps. Please note if it's gotten better since the time I started this thread.
Rich

[EricM]

I am having no problems reaching TFL, but loading individual forums is very sssslllllooooowwwwww. I am in Boise, ID, and I use Earthlink 56K dialup.

Eric

[Jim V]

IE 5.0, 56K modem, MSN.

I have not had problems logging into TFL, my problems have been with slow loading times after I get in. They don't occure all the time but often enough to wanta re-boot with a size 12. My other problems has been when I want to "back out" of a forum and return to the main menu and everything stops. I have to hit refresh to get out of the "stall" mode.

Location SE Michigan

[Rich Lucibella]

Eric, Jim, All-
I should have clarified. We know you can get to TFL quickly and we know the problems have been with higher content pages (ie: once you get into the Forums).

The question is this: are things faster [b]now[/i]?
Thanks-
Rich

[Gewehr98]

As of this evening, it's gotten much better, I can access messages now without the screen hanging at a given percentage. (I'm running Netscape Communicator 4.76, Windows NT 4.0 SP6, on a cable modem courtesy of RoadRunner) Hope it can stay running at least this smoothly for a while, Rich!

[Mal H]

Load times are roughly 1200% better now than earlier today. The problem seems to be gone.

ISP is starpower going through DirecPC proxy.

[BobR]

As of 11pm cst I am back to my normal cable loadup speed for the forums...thanks.

[George Hill]

Hey Guys... I'm a Router Technology Manager for Nortel Networks... The problem was not in TFL. TFL IS absolutly FINE. The server has been upgraded to the point that if this was Auto Racing... TFL would be an F1 car. The new TFL software is fantastic with our own Software Guru on TFL staff - A fellow that I know personally who if technology was church - would WALK ON WATER... As a Site - TFL is AS GOOD AS IT GETS.

Problems like what we have seen here in the last couple days are Service Provider related. Routers and Switches when not configured just right can do some really funky things. I have whole books about just what can go wrong in routing... what we have seen here is symptomatic of that.

You will notice however that things have improved very recently. Rich can be very persuasive and motivating in his communications with the Provider.

Note to Self: Do NOT get on Rich's Fecal Roster.
One more thing - Dont ask me specific technical questions - I'm a Manager... I HIRE PEOPLE for those details...
You ask me a question and I'll give you one of three answers or all three:
1. Reboot.
2. Reconfig.
3. Upgrade.

Anyways - I'm on DSL and T3 connections... And it was slow for me too. Not any more!

[Libertarian]

It is much better now Rich. I can switch around faster than I can think now. (Yeah, yeah, not all that fast, right?) Whatever was done to remedy the problem did the trick. Thanks for working at it so diligently.

[ArmySon]

As of 1:30am EST, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, TFL's speed is back to normal. I use a cable modem, 256 MB Micron PC-133 Memory, Athlon 1 Gig hz processor.

It was terribly slow today at work even with a T3 line.

[LawDog]

Here in Itchy Paw Falls, Texas, it's much faster than it was yesterday.

56k modem, Wichita Falls, TX, Cyberstation ISP.

LawDog

[Edited by LawDog on 12-16-2000 at 02:46 AM]

[blades67]

I have been dealing with the forum loading (stalling) problems for the last two days. Disabling the Cable and Wireless seems to have resolved much of the problem.

Another thing I encountered was that the different forums would not adhere to my preferences, specifically the "Show posts from:" would jump around from "last 5 days" to "last 30 days" depending on which forum I went into. That also seems to have been resolved.

I use AT&T Worldnet, 56K .v90 modem.

[Hal]

It appears to be back to normal now.

Northeast Ohio,

[JimR]

I'm on DSL, all my other regularly-visited sites loaded fast/normally.

For the last couple of days, I was wondering what was up with TFL. Very slow page loads.

Problem seems fixed now.

I'm on BellSouth.net in Atlanta.

[sks]

I was noticing some major slowdowns when loading the forums but today is like a new beginning. Things seem normal.

My connection is 256k DSL from San Salvador, El Salvador.