What has happened to make FreeRepublic so slow?

Vanity Question | 01/24/2009 | Swordmaker

[Swordmaker]

I have noticed that FR has become abysmally slow in response and page loading in the past day or so. I've noticed a few responses in the threads where other Freepers mention in passing the slowness. I checked it on several of my client's locations. Everywhere I brought up FR was slow.

Sometimes takes up to 30 seconds to load the browsing pages. Moving to a topic, is a bit faster but not much.

I also noticed last night that doing title searches that used to bring up pages of responses now only bring up less than a page.

John, Jim, what's going on? Are we being hit by a Denial of Service attack?

[nmh]

Increased internet traffic?

[nmh]

Increased internet traffic?

I’ve noticed the slow down too.

[autumnraine]

Slow for me and also the search function was messed up yesterday. I know everytime I tried to search, I got an error and I saw alot of duplicates.

[benjibrowder]

Well, Barack is trying to shut his opposition up...

Attacking FR would be a way of preventing them from organizing an effective opposition.

[Jet Jaguar]

Any clue as to why FR is slowed to a crawl?

[garykfd]

I thought it was just me...

[Swordmaker]

Why is FR so slow the last few days?

It took 21 seconds to return to the thread after hitting the POST button. 30 seconds to bring up the browser window. My Status Bar on Safari says “Contacting on www.freerepublic.com” for a long period... then it switches to “Waiting for www.freerepublic.com” for another long period.

[libh8er]

FreeRepublic uses antiquated technology (perl/cgi).

[Tainan]

Get a Mac.....

sorry...had to say it..;)
Same thing from this side of the world also...very slow and draggy.

[Swordmaker]

I thought it was just me...

That's why I posted... I decided it wasn't just me...

[jonrick46]

I am one who has a tendency to worry about cyber attacks from the enemies of free speech. Paranoia aside, the Free Republic is working on some very sophisticated equipment. With its complexity, there can always be a module somewhere in the system that gums up the performance.

[garykfd]

it took 23 sec from the time i clicked reply for the post box to come up.. usually takes 4-5 sec

[Swordmaker]

FreeRepublic uses antiquated technology (perl/cgi).

It was almost as antiquated last week when FR was quick and snappy... a week's more aging shouldn't antiquate UNIX or LINUX that much more.

;^)>

[ThomasThomas]

Somebody must say it!

Too many vanities?

:-)

[shield]

We're under attack by BO's thugs. Looks to me like the Robison's have developed a way to keep FR up....we were down lots during the election season and during the debates....I'd say this is great we're slow but can still pull up FR and post. It's better than having FR down.

[SERKIT]

* Black helicopters (or is that considered racist now?)
* Bush's fault
* Stateful inspection of packets to track down conservatives
* Billy-the-Bomber has gone high-tech and is now bombing websites
* Rahm Emanuel is going site by site, stabbing a table with a steak knife yelling "dead, dead, dead!" each time a successful denial-of-service is completed.
* Rush's fault
* Another Clinton-inspired coincidence

[garykfd]

I HATE gummy electrons don’t you?? LOL

[max americana]

2 solutions. Clean your hard drive of internet porn and temporary files and maybe it’ll go faster.
-the 2nd is that “maybe” FReepers haven’t PAID FR in this current $$ drive so the servers suffer.

[Tarpon]

Nope same slow here ... I thought it was just my ISP.

[svcw]

Don’t know. For me its only FR.

[Eye of Unk]

I decided to reduce my posts to almost zero the last two days.

[litehaus]

Yepper, slower than ever, other destinations same (Quick) however, just FR slowing to a crawl now... Dunno what causing it......Hope Jim gets it solved....

[Swordmaker]

Get a Mac.....

I've GOT a Mac... ;^)>

Everywhere else is really quick. I just upgraded from DSL to AT&Ts Uverse... going from around 568Kb per second to 6Mb pers second... and FreeRepublic SLOWED DOWN!

[lilycicero]

Ditto....super slow mo

[mamelukesabre]

This is nothing. You shoulda tried using FR about 12 hours ago.

[shield]

I’ve been at other sites and they are fast/normal...FR is under attack by BO’s thugs.

[silverleaf]

balky and slow slow slower
going on 3 days now
I have FIOS

[shield]

People on dial up are screwed doubt they can even pull up FR....

[madison10]

There’s just more of us here drowning our sorrows in typed conversation these days.

[Swordmaker]

This is nothing. You shoulda tried using FR about 12 hours ago.

I don't know what FR was doing then, but I was fast then... fast asleep, that is.

[cruise_missile]

It’s because of a Black Barry virus.

[count-your-change]

Posters are using too many BIG words. And there's too many misspelled words so the guy that looks up stuff in the dictionary is really busy.

[LiberConservative]

Yep. Slow for me, too. All day today. It's annoying. My guess would be a subtle DOS bug from an 0bama disciple. We already know what 0 thinks of Rush. I think we need to make an example of whoever is responsible.

[bethybabes69]

Definitely lots of latency with FR lately, I got some 404's the other day too.

Maybe this is a good sign, that people want to move onto more Conservative opinions, or maybe it's a DOS issue, maybe the Moderators could look at FR's dns records and look for requests to see if some scriptkiddy is pinging the FR servers.

[Orange1998]

Unbearably slow. I wonder if FR trying to save a buck or two or other issues beyond control.

[TChad]

Reloading this page averages about 18 seconds in Firefox on a broadband connection. I have seen none of the dreaded proxy errors after posting, but FR is certainly slower than usual.

[Kadric]

Actually it looks about the same to dial up. Slow as normal.

[Bahbah]

Lovely home page.

[LuciaMia]

It’s not constant. Usually the page loads fine. But every so often it just stalls.

[Miss Didi]

Soooooooo slow...I have time to run to Bloomingdale’s between posts.

[bigheadfred]

This will affect me not at all.

It does give other people time to try and figure out “WTF did he just say?”

Bonus

Besides, if I started posting today what I was going to say tomorrow, Would ANYBODY know the difference, or better yet. EVEN CARE? LOL.

[shield]

I would think dial up would time out before pulling up FR...but you are right here at FR you think you’re on dial up.

[Swordmaker]

Reloading this page averages about 18 seconds in Firefox on a broadband connection. I have seen none of the dreaded proxy errors after posting, but FR is certainly slower than usual.

I've noticed a few more than normal double posts as well. I think it's because people think they didn't click on the button and click again because it's so long between click and results....

[JudyinCanada]

Phew - I thought it was just me.

I had a birthday come and go just trying to post this.

[rovenstinez]

I have a MAC, I thought it was slow, as in Mexico things are slow..

[bethybabes69]

Get a Mac.....
I've GOT a Mac... ;^)>

I got two ATM, one (used efficiently for a MAC) as a doorstop, and a Maccie D's Big Mac, which is tasty, way tastier than a mac air! (only kidding Apple lovers).

Meanwhile, on both my bleeding edge NIX boxes at home, FR is way slow.

Moderator, check those DNS records ASAP.

[bigheadfred]

Happy Birthday! (sorry if I’m late) :-)

[rockinqsranch]

On dial up here. No choice in the matter due location.

Waaaaaaaay slower than usual loading up the articles. Tears of frustration running down our cheeks (worse than normal with dial).

Don’t know what’s going on, but hope everything will get better soon.

[JudyinCanada]

Lol - you are forgiven. Just don’t forget again next year!