Anyone else getting long delays opening Free Republic pages? (VANITY)

I have been getting long delays in opening Free Republic pages or threads. It can take up to 5-10 seconds.

When posting a comment, I occasionally get a timeout error, sometimes even with the error it does post, and when I resubmit the post it without checking first by refreshing, I can sometimes get two posts.

Occasionally it times out completely opening a window and I get an NGINX gateway error.

This is happening on no other sites for me. I can ping any other number of Internet sites, and get 20 ms responses. Pinging freerepublic.com gives 60-70 ms responses.

If I ping all other websites, this is what I get:
PING whitehouse.gov (192.0.66.51): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 192.0.66.51: icmp_seq=0 ttl=60 time=26.331 ms
64 bytes from 192.0.66.51: icmp_seq=1 ttl=60 time=21.056 ms
64 bytes from 192.0.66.51: icmp_seq=2 ttl=60 time=37.691 ms
64 bytes from 192.0.66.51: icmp_seq=3 ttl=60 time=21.747 ms
64 bytes from 192.0.66.51: icmp_seq=4 ttl=60 time=29.494 ms

However, if I ping Free Republic, this is what I get:
PING freerepublic.com (45.79.56.181): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 45.79.56.181: icmp_seq=0 ttl=52 time=71.808 ms
64 bytes from 45.79.56.181: icmp_seq=1 ttl=52 time=68.921 ms
64 bytes from 45.79.56.181: icmp_seq=2 ttl=52 time=68.656 ms
64 bytes from 45.79.56.181: icmp_seq=3 ttl=52 time=62.789 ms
64 bytes from 45.79.56.181: icmp_seq=4 ttl=52 time=62.876 ms

I see this kind of disparity universally, ping times to Free Republic are 2-3 times longer.

I used to be a sysadmin, and sometimes, the causes for these things could range from a system backup that was just running way over and causing a cascade on the next backup, to a hung process, to anything else.

CAVEAT: this is my understanding, as flawed as it may be, and there are MANY people on this forum who know all this far more intimately than I do...I hope they WILL "gently" correct me where I am wrong! From my understanding, you contact the Free Republic gateway server when you click on a link...

The FR Gateway server accepts your request for that HTML page, and then "forwards" your request to the appropriate "Load Balancer" Server asking it to return information for that URL on the FR page you clicked on.

If the Load Balancer (or ANY of the other servers mentioned below) is not responding for some reason in a specified period of seconds, when that predetermined time elapses, the Gateway Server will trigger a message back to you at your PC telling you:

"Load Balancer" Servers, do just that...they typically distribute requests from you, me, and everyone else on the Internet o that ALL the requests from us don't go to ONE web server, they are sent to what are called "Web Servers"whose job it is to build and send web pages back to YOU so you can read a thread, look at your Freep Mail, or create a post. This is sent back over the Internet to YOU where you get to navigate on Free Repubic and do Freeper things. Having this "load balancer" server which handles the distribution of traffic to multiple web servers (whose job is to accept your "request" from your home PC and built into an HTML web page and sent back to you. This whole thing is set up to keep a single Web server from getting overloaded. The more web servers you have, the less likely they are individually to get backed up.

If you click on a thread to read it, your request is accepted at the gateway, sent to a load balancer, which sends it to one of many web servers that build the web page for you, and that web server gets down to the nuts and bolts of the whole Free Republic thing...if you are reading a thread, it queries the database server for ALL the posts on that thread and all the information put in by the person who started it. Dates, times, posters, all of that, and the database sends ALL that information back to the web server that asked for it.

It builds a web page of that thread, and sends it back to the Gateway server (I think) which sends it BACK to you.

Your computer gets the incoming web page and loads it into your browser. If you respond to a post on a thread, the database will know who you are responding to, and file your post, in that thread, to that person, date and time stamped and will write your post to the database.

The next request to see that thread will include all the other posts on it as well as yours, so the web server rebuilds it every time.

Here is the thing: If there is ANY lengthy delay in any response what the Gateway server sends out to all the servers upstream of it, the Load Balancer, the Web Servers, the Database, any of those...you will end up getting that message in the graphic above.

If the Gateway Server is having trouble accepting your request, I think you simply get a long delay where it doesn't load, or it says something like "FreeRepublic.com is unavailable or unreachable"...something like that.

Yes, all the time. Hitting “Reply” to your post threw this after 50 seconds: 504 Gateway Time-out nginx/1.18.0 (Ubuntu) Tried a second time and page loaded after ten seconds. It’s gotten bad. Chris Robinson would do a great service to all members if he posted a “State of FR” report. He could discuss planned directions, finances, improvements, performance, moderation, strategic direction, etc. Everything is always so opaque except for the begging for more money.

Yes, since early September, 504 Gateway Time-out has become one of the most popular pages on FR!

And since I, as well as most posters here I assume, consider FR as more than just the best conservative news aggregator, but a conservative community of both fellowship as well as debate, then consistent with this I also would encourage ownership to treat it more as such, with regular explanations for problems, particular needs, and future plans. I also believe that presenting a list of operating expenses, meaning where donor's money is going, would elicit more. Also if needed, accept user help with technical issues, for I am sure many would gladly do so.

But most importantly, please do not compromise with its historical moral conservative stand, for God (Thy kingdom come) and for a country under Him, much as overall expressed by its late founder, and not reflect the degradation flowing from forsaking that (including tolerance of vulgarity and profanity).

Yes. It is horrible. FR has become totally unusable.

I hit “Reply” to you and it took 50 seconds to get “504 Gateway Time-out. nginx/1.18.0 (Ubuntu)”

Time-out errors happen on about 10% of pages. No page loads faster than 10 seconds, usually 20-30 seconds. I’ve learned to copy my reply before posting so I can use my reply when the time-out craps out a page.

Chris, people are going to stop donating. You REALLY need to have a discussion about the future of FR. I am asking myself if I should make another donation to a sinking ship. If you would honestly discuss the problem, how money is spent, prognosis for restoring performance, and how you will attract new blood, then I would be happy to donate.

Performance is only part of the problem. I’ll wake up (Pacific time) and find only three or four articles posted overnight. Content volume is way down.

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