Posted on 07/29/2017 3:33:27 PM PDT by djf
Sorry I have to say this. But FR has become nearly unusable these days.
You used to have a feeling that within 30 seconds to a minute, your page would be resolved and loaded.
But no more. I don't know how many times lately, I have hit refresh or picked a new thread only to wait and wait and wait and then I give up and go to another site.
The powers that be recommend limiting your window options to twenty. My reply is, if that's the problem, the just taking the option away and making it twenty should be the solution.
And I know about DOS attacks - they can easily be filtered by a front-end server - so that shouldn't be a problem.
Anyways, whatever it is, it's getting series. And Hugh!
I don’t understand. I wish there was a magic wand I could wave that would get rid of this ongoing DOS attack, but I don’t know of one. And John hasn’t found one either, but he’s still trying.
The technical problem comes from the attitude problem because the Robinsons won’t listen to good advice.
tracert www.freerepublic.com
Wait. You'll see a list of hops between yourself and the destination. If you see a lot of * instead of time indications, that's a good indication that there is problems with that segment of the internet route. (Think of it as freeway construction). Could be because of down equipment or unusually high volume of traffic-- lots of reasons.
I sense your frustration as well. Near as I can tell; your attitude is just fine other than the reluctance to update/upgrade. I personally could care less about emoji's but the like button is valuable because it's a quick easy way to say "Nice Post" or "Good Post". It also cuts down on posts being made just to say that. Plus it's the standard in the industry. Those things are far secondary to having the built in formatting options using buttons rather than html code manually.
The FR forum software is brilliant. That’s the tragedy of FR.
Been here for more years than I can count...FR has ran almost flawlessly for most of that time...I’m not giving up on them...
Why not answer my lost
Thought it might be a problem with my carrier.
If the problem is a massive reoccurring DOS attack, is there software and/or hardware available to ward it off? Or is the only defense just to have a massive amount of bandwidth and equipment to handle it without a major slowdown.
I’m just asking — just a forum user (and $$ contributor) trying hard to understand how you can avoid and/or handle such an attack. I agree with JimRob that the cloud may not be the way to go because then you are in the hands of others who may control your fate. So the question boils down to software and hardware to foil the attackers.
Post
The new security must be doing some of this.
Thanks, genius.
I don't demand that Jim reveal why he does things the way he does, And he doesn't demand that I view the site or make contributions ... so I will stop making contributions.
It's not that Free Republic is not valuable, it's that I do not see how FR needs my money to support it because it doesn't seem to be being spent on supporting the site, so I have to assume it's not. The technology to support an all-text site that makes a few calls to a database is not that expensive nor rocket science. Some very simple caching would be even cheaper but I assume that's a known fact.
So until I know something different, I think I'll cancel what (not all that much - not making myself out to be a hero) I was giving monthly.
And if anyone has intelligent commentary on that ... I'm totally open. I just don't think FR needs my money. Not asking for a balance sheet ... but something just doesn't add up to me. Happy for someone to explain to me how it adds up.
The DOS attacks come at regular, POLITICAL intervals.
I don’t believe it’s Jim’s fault, it is that this is an incredible resource for conservative discourse that inspires the attack.
(The Enemy of free speech and the Enemy of the body of Christ are one in the same, IMHO)
Thanks. BTW, of all the complainers on this thread, you’re one of the few who actually appreciated FR enough in the past to be a regular donor. And I appreciate that very much. Sorry you have lost confidence in us. We’ve held this system together for almost twenty-one years now. Had some good times, had some rough times, but have always managed to eventually fix whatever was broke and continue on. And I’m sure this little problem will also appear in our rear view mirror eventually and we’ll be trucking merrily along. Just wishing it could be sooner.
And as I said before; there's a way to make everyone happy with the option of using this classic look or an improved up to date format. Win win for everyone. But as Jim said; figuring out a way to stop this dang DoS problem is priority number one.
We all love FR and we love and respect Jim. It kills me that this site doesn’t live up to its potential. At some point you have to start complaining.
If it is indeed a DOS attack, it seems that you don't have an answer to that either. Just updating it as you have suggested doesn't sound like it would solve an underlying problem like a DOS attack.
You’re correct...
This Really Sucks.
And it pisses Me Off
To think some pajama boy
Is laughing His add off
That you and I can’t even mix it up!
But boy if I could.. I’d piss off everybody that’s passed Off!
Maybe, maybe not.
I loathe FaceCrook anyway but, the larger point is there are ways to mitigate this craptastic performance and many of us are willing pony up extra loot and be done with it.
For many of us, a site which performs reliably and consistently would enable us to grow the Freeper community and be an ever bigger influence in conservative, religious and useless meme issues.
And 9600 Freepers on FaceCrook is not a small number of dissatisfied FR members.
Today, that is 3% over time that will become 5%, then 10%.
Once we attrit 15% it will keep going.
I like our little community but, I and a few others have implored JR to multi home this on separate VM shared servers.
That is how modern sites do it precisely to avoid this crap.
It’s called business process outsourcing and it’s purpose is to be the specialist at keeping a website up and running , while the owner of a website manages the content.
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