"Service Unavilable" messages

[jcroft]

Members:

If you are seeing "Service unavailable" messages on NewBeetle.org, the reason is that our service has been throttled by our service provider, Dreamhost. I received the following message from them today:

Hello,

I am writing to inform you that I've had to throttle the amount of
traffic that 'newbeetle.org' can receive in order to preserve the
integrity of the webserver.

The amount of traffic that your website was receiving was causing the
Apache server to either slow down, hang, or crash depending on how many
hits it was receiving at that time. Throttling the number of connections
your website can receive is definitely the best option to still allow
your site to function as well as ensuring the integrity of our service.

If you believe your traffic has died down or you've identified and fixed
a problem causing the increased number of connections just write back and
let us know. We'll check it out and remove the throttle if everything
looks to be okay.

Sorry for any inconvenience this has caused. Let me know if you have any
questions.


Thanks!
Michael S

I am looking into it, but I don't suspect there is an actual problem on the site. I suspect are simply exceeding their usual traffic expectations. I'm not sure what I'm going to be able to do about this, but I am looking into it.

Jeff

[CrazyJames]

YAY FUN!!

Its great to know that we are BANDWIDTH THEIVES!

[Toad]

Yay! They should be happy, they're hosting a very popular website. If anything this popular website should get a discount cuz we use thier service, oh yeah, and all the bandwith.

[from Margaritaville...]

Well, on behalf of several members and Member Sponsors, I volunteer to go to Dreamhost and "throttle" them myself! Maybe we could segregate then limit the amount of "guests" who could access the Org based on traffic volume...

[jcroft]

Originally Posted by Alan Margosian

Well, on behalf of several members and Member Sponsors, I volunteer to go to Dreamhost and "throttle" them myself! Maybe we could segregate then limit the amount of "guests" who could access the Org based on traffic volume...

BINGO! I think you've solved our problem, at least temporarily. I think I will turn off forums access to guests. That should reduce connections enough that I can get them to lift the throttle (hopefully) and not affect the members at all.

It's not ideal, but it may just be what we have to do.

Thanks for thinking!

[jcroft]

Guest access to the forums is off. I don't like this one bit, but I think it's important that the members come first. If I can come up with some other measures to reduce connections, perhaps I can turn guest access back on. Hopefully this will patch up the problem at least temporarily, though.

Thanks again.

Jeff

[Toad]

easy, guests dont have access ot the photo sections. Can yu limit it to just that, that's hwere all the bandwith is going probably.

[jcroft]

Originally Posted by Toad

easy, guests dont have access ot the photo sections. Can yu limit it to just that, that's hwere all the bandwith is going probably.

I can do that, and it might help...but it's not a matter of bandwidth. We're nowhere near using our bandwidth limit. It's a matter of http connections. We're maxing out the httpd server.

Reducing access to the photos threads would help that, yes (they have more http connections within them than most other pages). If turning off guest access seems to work, then I'll try turning off guest access only to certain forums (like those that have a lot of photos). If that still works, we may be golden.

[Toad]

oh, i htought it was like a bottleneck of bandwith, not a max connection thing.

I guess i read that wrong.

[from Margaritaville...]

Don't know if it's a coincidence but the elapsed times between "jumps" has been reduced noticeably...


Thank you for taking care of the "members"...
Alan

[larryziegler]

Kudos to Jeff and Alan for coming up with a very viable solution. My 2 cents is that this is a memebership driven site. Guests should need to register to access anyway. /me draws a red circle around the words "No Unregistered Lurkers" Great job guys!

[Lnzbug]

Originally Posted by larryziegler

Kudos to Jeff and Alan for coming up with a very viable solution. My 2 cents is that this is a memebership driven site. Guests should need to register to access anyway. /me draws a red circle around the words "No Unregistered Lurkers" Great job guys!

ditto!

[jcroft]

For the record, I don't really agree with that sentiment. I believe these forums are an incredible wealth of New Beetle-related info. I believe that information wants to be free. And I believe that, ideally, we should be providing all of that info, for free (not talking money here...freedom as in speech, not as in beer), to anyone who needs it. Having to register just to view some info is a pain in the ass, and I personally hate it when sites do that to me. I'd much rather not have to do that here.

All that having been said, those who have registered and contributed here definitely should come first, and in a situation where we can't provide the content to everyone -- like right now -- I'm okay with turning off guest access.

But, my hope is still that we'll find a better way, so that the information (or at least most of it) can be free to anyone who needs it.

[SilverShadow]

Originally Posted by jcroft

I can do that, and it might help...but it's not a matter of bandwidth. We're nowhere near using our bandwidth limit. It's a matter of http connections. We're maxing out the httpd server.

Methinks your ISP hasn't been reinvesting enough of their income on keeping their proxy servers up to date.

Do you have any legal remedies or is it in your contract that they can do this - even if it's because they failed to keep their equipment updated.

Gotta watch that fine print because it will rise up and bite you in the arse as this scenario proves.

I'd be ISP shopping immediately.

_____

SS

[Breez]

Okay Okay, I admit it... I am addicted to ORG.

I am part of the house. And I can't seem to leave the site.

Thanks Jeff and James for dealing with this.

[CrazyJames]

Its not entirely dealt with...

By limiting the guest users, what we have is just more users signing up, yesterday we had 74 new members

So.... now we gotta figure out something else if it keeps happening

[jcroft]

Originally Posted by SilverShadow

Methinks your ISP hasn't been reinvesting enough of their income on keeping their proxy servers up to date.

Do you have any legal remedies or is it in your contract that they can do this - even if it's because they failed to keep their equipment updated.

Gotta watch that fine print because it will rise up and bite you in the arse as this scenario proves.

I'd be ISP shopping immediately.

_____

SS

Of course it's in the contract that they can do this, just like it is with every hosting company in the world (this is not "my ISP", it's a web hosting company).

This is the bottom line, guys: NewBeetle.org doesn't make money. We make just enough in donations each month to break even. I haven't been able to get a sponsor in a year.

You can talk about "ISP shopping" all you want, but unless someone is willing to foot a $300/mo bill for a mission critical host, that's just what it is -- talk. I can't afford to pay for NewBeetle.org out of my own pocket. I just can't do it.

I know some of you take this site VERY seriously, but the reality is, this is NOT a mission critical site. If it's down for a few hours, no one is hurt (if it DOES hurt you, you really need to look into getting outdoors more often). Mission critical web hosting is expensive. Small-scale web hosting is cheap. You get what you pay for. We pay for cheap, because we're not mission critical and we don't make any money to pay for anything else.

Sorry, but that's just the way it is.

[from Margaritaville...]

Originally Posted by jcroft

I know some of you take this site VERY seriously, but the reality is, this is NOT a mission critical site. If it's down for a few hours, no one is hurt (if it DOES hurt you, you really need to look into getting outdoors more often).

That's the point. It's been over 100* outside here for 11 days now. My lawn looks like a duck blind. We've had five heat-related fatalities in Sacramento County just yesterday (11 since Saturday). If we can't get to the Org, people may indeed, perish...

[SilverShadow]

Originally Posted by jcroft

Of course it's in the contract that they can do this, just like it is with every hosting company in the world (this is not "my ISP", it's a web hosting company).

Ahh..semantics over a figure of speech.

That this site is not 'mission critical' is certainly agreed by all; however, because of the wealth of technical information easily accessible
and clearly presented, it would not be stretching one's imagination too far to consider this site to be 'economically critical'.

Think about it. Haven't we all saved some bucks/gotten better deals/been kept up to date on recalls, etc.? Of course we have.

We're richer, safer, and wiser - all for free. Where else are you going to get a deal like that? (rhetorical question...nowhere)

I believe it's about time that we started to 'pay the piper' so to speak. Very few of you realize what it takes to operate a forum
of this magnitude. As operating costs continue to creep relentlessly upward and cash flow into the site remains esentially flat,
it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see where this is going.

It's 'what can we do?' time for real.

I would gladly pay a yearly/monthly fee/service charge/subscription - whatever you want to call it - to keep this site from folding.

What are your thoughts orgers?

Edit: Jeff would never be so bold as to blatently ask us for money...he'd rather go down with the ship. Let's keep newbeetle.org afloat!
_____

SS

[from Margaritaville...]

Count me in!