Posted on 09/09/2026 6:55:32 AM PDT by rlmorel
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.
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Jim
no
Yep...me too.
Not really.
Yes, but I am not logged in.
Clear your cache.
Yes. It’s so slow I can’t answer your question until tomorrow.........
Have you tried turning it off and on again?
Yes, very annoying.
No delay.
Possible sit/res: Reboot your router to clear out its network bot parasites. They corrupt the ARP tables.
504 gateway or something like that ,LOL
yes I am seeing that FR is slowing down.
Yes, for days now.
My computer is slower than my old coffee pot.. It’s even slower than I am, and that’s about the meanest thing I can say about it...
Yes. sluggish.
also seeing multiple posts which is likely related.
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/4394812/posts
Damn. Don’t you have a gif you can post on that to make it funny???
I am seeing a longer lag time, but not as long as yours. I’m posting from my iPad, not a PC.
Yes. I have been noticing it now for 3-5 days. Nowhere else.
Yes (from upstate NY).
This is just speculation, but I'm in IT so I get to do that :-) ...
If I were Chris and John, looking at the terrible shortfall of funding for this quarter, which follows the shortfall from last quarter, I'd be looking where to save some money to stay alive...
So assuming the internet hosting service has this feature, I would cut back the number of vCPU cores and RAM allocated to the VM(s) that run FR. Cost scales pretty much linearly with #CPU and #RAM.
Result: Slower performance under load, but lower cost, and the site stays online.
Years ago this was common especially when Free Republic was running behind in meeting their FReepathon goals.
Management would urge us all to donate more and more to “update the servers” or something like that.
Many people looked at these delays as deliberate. Warnings that FR could just completely fail to load someday if $$$ didn’t come pouring in.
Having said this.... How is our current FReepathon going?
Oh. Not good. Not good at all.
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