SmugMug sloooow at times

jww · August 24, 2006

Greetings,

Not a complaint as I really do like SmugMug. However I getting quite a few emails that at times my galleries are taking forever to load. I started playing around and sure enough, over the course of the last day or so I have also encountered where some pages take a several minutes to load and are sometimes even incomplete. (blank spots - missing pictures)

Thinking that maybe I was having a connection issue, I started validating that I did have quite a bit of bandwidth and no issues with any other sites. (non smugmug)

The weird thing is, of the times that I have been able to see the slowdown, 10 minutes to 30 minutes later, everything was again fine. Have there been issues there that we are not aware of?

thanks,
jww - www.jwwwebdesign.smugmug.com

Andy · August 24, 2006

jww wrote:

Greetings,

Not a complaint as I really do like SmugMug. However I getting quite a few emails that at times my galleries are taking forever to load. I started playing around and sure enough, over the course of the last day or so I have also encountered where some pages take a several minutes to load and are sometimes even incomplete. (blank spots - missing pictures)

Thinking that maybe I was having a connection issue, I started validating that I did have quite a bit of bandwidth and no issues with any other sites. (non smugmug)

The weird thing is, of the times that I have been able to see the slowdown, 10 minutes to 30 minutes later, everything was again fine. Have there been issues there that we are not aware of?

thanks,
jww - www.jwwwebdesign.smugmug.com

Nothing that I'm aware of. I've just checked your site, it's all well and good here. One thing, you have some large galleries, and if a viewer was last in all-thumbs mode, it could take a little bit of time to load that whole page.

BeachBill · August 24, 2006

Me Too

jww wrote:

Not a complaint as I really do like SmugMug. However I getting quite a few emails that at times my galleries are taking forever to load. I started playing around and sure enough, over the course of the last day or so I have also encountered where some pages take a several minutes to load and are sometimes even incomplete. (blank spots - missing pictures)

I saw the same thing yesterday. I was browsing quite a few different smugmug sites (not my own) and had the exact same results. I haven't been looking at pics today so I don't know if the slowness issues are continuing. FYI, I connect via a T1 line that is quite fast and under utilized...

jww · August 24, 2006

Andy wrote:

Nothing that I'm aware of. I've just checked your site, it's all well and good here. One thing, you have some large galleries, and if a viewer was last in all-thumbs mode, it could take a little bit of time to load that whole page.

Hmmm.. that could be, but I thought I had it so it was always in classic mode so not sure how that would happen unless there is something else I need to check in each gallery to force them into classic.

Personally, my slowdown was mostly waiting to load the medium or large picture. Even with a small number of thumbnails per page, the medium would time out loading and from one persons comment they got a large string of xml halfway down the page. I haven't done any customization other than adding statcounter so I dunno..

Basically what I do is come in off the links captured by statcounter as I am always curious which picture caught someones eye. It would load most of the thumbs and stall waiting on the medium to load to the right of the thumbs.

Thanks for you help!!

gpphotos · August 24, 2006

yea
same thing is happening to me as we speak. im connecting from my school's T3 line and my main page is loading slow. ive checked back on and off for the past few hours and its been doing the same thing.

mdraughn · August 24, 2006

I've been seeing something similar too. My website gets all its photographs served by smugmug, and they've been taking longer than usual to load.

Sometimes.

It comes and goes, and of course I have no way to know if its my connection or not.

digitalpins · August 24, 2006

yep I was testing a slideshow of mine right now and its running really slow

jww · August 24, 2006

gpphotos wrote:

same thing is happening to me as we speak. im connecting from my school's T3 line and my main page is loading slow. ive checked back on and off for the past few hours and its been doing the same thing.

..I hadn't noticed it tonight although I have been uploading a few more albums and not really checking. When I first found out about it, I was talking to someone on my cell phone. They were telling me about how slow my new galleries were loading and were concerned. I attempted to pull one up and also found it took forever to load. We are on different ISP's in two different parts of the country. Right now it seems fine..

jww - www.jwwwebdesign.smugmug.com

Wireless · August 24, 2006

Sorry to hear people are having trouble!

Traceroutes, or even better, the IP address (publicly addressable) would be really helpful to troubleshoot. I'm not seeing anything on our end to indicate a problem (which doesn't mean there isn't one) at the moment.

Windows:
Start > Run > type 'cmd.exe' (w/o ticks), and then 'tracert www.smugmug.com' into the command window

OS X:
Applications > Utilities > Terminal > 'traceroute www.smugmug.com' (w/o ticks) into the terminal

Cut/paste into a PM to me or into this thread.

Baldy · August 25, 2006

Andrew, we're getting similar feedback at ADVrider. Some guy posted his traceroute there:

http://www.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?p=3156505

gus · August 25, 2006

For what its worth baldy ..im noticing a def slow down from here as well.

NikonGirl · August 25, 2006

It was slow for me too on Tuesday night. Doesn't seem so bad tonight (in fact it's actually quite fast), but when I needed speed the most, Smugmug didn't come through for me. I had a few family members over Tuesday night and we were all looking at pictures of my galleries. It was so slow (a minute to load a single photo) we finally gave up.

Reminds me of a recent experience staying at a hotel. I called the front desk for extra pillows and was told they didn't have any! Now to me, at the end of the day, having extra pillows for a guest's comfort is their main job. When I lay down to sleep, I don't care about swimming pools, free continental breakfast, or jacuzzi tubs. I care about pillows.

So how does this relate? Because when I sit down in front of my computer to show my Smugmug galleries to my famliy, that is Smugmug's main job. At that moment, I don't care about print options, or gallery options, or other features. I want my photos to display fast. It's a photo sharing site. And by golly, I want a fast viewing experience every single time I log on.

Will I stay again at that same hotel? Probably. It's convenient, reasonably priced and the bed was comfortable. Will I leave Smugmug for another site? No. Smugmug is great 99.9% of the time. It's that 0.1% that frustrates me.

Oh well...if Smugmug were perfect, what would we all talk about!!

:

gpphotos · August 25, 2006

i ran two different traces from my home computer (comcast)

here's both tracerts.

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\Documents and Settings\Owner>tracert www.smugmug.com

Tracing route to hera.smugmug.com [63.81.134.23]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 24 ms 23 ms 23 ms 73.25.112.1
2 24 ms 24 ms 27 ms 68.86.139.37
3 22 ms * 10 ms 10g-8-1-ar02.augusta.ga.augusta.comcast.net [68.
86.138.33]
4 24 ms 25 ms 24 ms 68.86.139.142
5 29 ms 27 ms 27 ms 12.118.184.13
6 46 ms 48 ms 45 ms gbr1-p70.attga.ip.att.net [12.123.197.186]
7 46 ms 49 ms 45 ms tbr1-p013502.attga.ip.att.net [12.122.12.13]
8 44 ms 45 ms 45 ms tbr2-cl17.wswdc.ip.att.net [12.122.10.69]
9 40 ms 41 ms 45 ms gar1-p360.abnva.ip.att.net [12.123.8.45]
10 * * * Request timed out.
11 51 ms 51 ms 49 ms tge7-3.fr3.lga.llnw.net [69.28.171.158]
12 64 ms 66 ms 61 ms tge2-1.fr3.ord.llnw.net [69.28.171.193]
13 104 ms 108 ms 112 ms tge1-2.fr3.sjc.llnw.net [69.28.171.66]
14 112 ms 109 ms 96 ms e5-3.fr1.sjc.llnw.net [69.28.148.129]
15 107 ms 106 ms 107 ms pri.r1-ge0-2-eq-sj.smugmug.com [206.223.117.70]

16 113 ms 117 ms 118 ms hera.smugmug.com [63.81.134.23]

Trace complete.

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\Documents and Settings\Owner>tracert www.smugmug.com

Tracing route to hera.smugmug.com [63.81.134.23]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 10 ms 26 ms 23 ms 73.25.112.1
2 33 ms 27 ms 24 ms 68.86.139.37
3 24 ms 24 ms * 10g-8-1-ar02.augusta.ga.augusta.comcast.net [68.
86.138.33]
4 24 ms 23 ms 23 ms 68.86.139.142
5 27 ms 27 ms 26 ms 12.118.184.13
6 44 ms 45 ms 33 ms gbr1-p70.attga.ip.att.net [12.123.197.186]
7 44 ms 43 ms 43 ms tbr1-p013502.attga.ip.att.net [12.122.12.13]
8 42 ms 42 ms 43 ms tbr2-cl17.wswdc.ip.att.net [12.122.10.69]
9 42 ms 41 ms 40 ms gar1-p360.abnva.ip.att.net [12.123.8.45]
10 * * * Request timed out.
11 50 ms 96 ms 55 ms tge7-3.fr3.lga.llnw.net [69.28.171.158]
12 63 ms 67 ms 63 ms tge2-1.fr3.ord.llnw.net [69.28.171.193]
13 103 ms 103 ms 91 ms tge1-2.fr3.sjc.llnw.net [69.28.171.66]
14 111 ms 110 ms 111 ms e5-3.fr1.sjc.llnw.net [69.28.148.129]
15 105 ms 104 ms 107 ms pri.r1-ge0-2-eq-sj.smugmug.com [206.223.117.70]

16 115 ms 111 ms 110 ms hera.smugmug.com [63.81.134.23]

Trace complete.

gpphotos · August 25, 2006

looks like there's a problem with an AT&T router, which is really not uncommon. unfortunatly i doubt andy can wave his magic wand to fix the problem either.

mdraughn · August 25, 2006

I just went through about a minute of slow- (or not-at-all-) loading images. Traceroute looks pretty fast, though...

Tracing route to hera.smugmug.com [63.81.134.23]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 * * * Request timed out.
2 14 ms 14 ms 14 ms 220.ge-0-1-0.cr2.chi1.speakeasy.net [69.17.83.15
3]
3 15 ms 14 ms 16 ms rt1ec-equinix.il.shawcable.net [206.223.119.20]
4 14 ms 15 ms 14 ms rd1ec-ge0-0-0.il.shawcable.net [66.163.65.17]
5 15 ms 14 ms 15 ms rc1ch-pos5-0.il.shawcable.net [66.163.65.9]
6 74 ms 75 ms 74 ms rc2sj-pos0-0.cl.shawcable.net [66.163.77.74]
7 * * * Request timed out.
8 84 ms 77 ms 74 ms hera.smugmug.com [63.81.134.23]
Trace complete.

mdraughn · August 25, 2006

And now, just a few minutes later, I can reload a web page full of 25 custom-render targeted images and they load almost faster than I can scroll down the page.

Intermittent performance problems that you can't see from your data center?

You have my sympathy.

gpphotos · August 25, 2006

yea...after working for nortel networks and dealing with their OC-256 and other fiber backbone problems, i can tell ya its a pain to track problems when you're dealing with equipment from a bunch of different companies :cry

dmc · August 25, 2006

serious dog today.....

BeachBill · August 25, 2006

dmc wrote:

serious dog today.....

Oh yes, very bad. Some pages don't even complete loading...

And it's not a connectivity issue...

Tracing route to www.smugmug.com over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 127.0.0.1
2 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 10.110.0.43
3 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 12.170.70.1
4 8 ms 4 ms 2 ms 12.127.139.85
5 3 ms 2 ms 4 ms gbr6-p80.la2ca.ip.att.net [12.123.199.206]
6 4 ms 3 ms 4 ms tbr2-p013601.la2ca.ip.att.net [12.122.11.157]
7 2 ms 2 ms 2 ms gar2-p3152.lsnca.ip.att.net [12.123.222.61]
8 2 ms 3 ms 4 ms 12.118.42.26
9 14 ms 14 ms 16 ms tge1-3.fr3.sjc.llnw.net [69.28.171.118]
10 11 ms 12 ms 13 ms e5-3.fr1.sjc.llnw.net [69.28.148.129]
11 14 ms 17 ms 16 ms pri.r1-ge0-2-eq-sj.smugmug.com [206.223.117.70]

12 16 ms 16 ms 16 ms hera.smugmug.com [63.81.134.23]

Trace complete.

Elysium · August 25, 2006

Really slow for me as well.

happytraveller · August 25, 2006

dead slow
Just signed up to smugmug and I must have picked a bad day. Uploading was so painfully slow which decreased throughout the day so much that I thought I was travelling back in time.

After about 4 hours of uploading a few photos, I thought I'd edit the keywords. Well it's official, I've lost the will to live. 20 mins to change one keyword! What's going on?

I've spent the last couple of weeks comparing various phto hosting sites and have been impressed with smugmug so far. Since joining up it's been the most frustrating experience.

Please tell me it's just a momentary glitch. If not then I'll have to go elsewhere, and that would be a shame.

Any advice on what I could be contributing to this snails pace is most welcome.

Thanks a lot.

happytraveller.

Newsy · August 25, 2006

Just a bad day. Exceptionally bad.

.

Andy · August 25, 2006

happytraveller wrote:

Any advice on what I could be contributing to this snails pace is most welcome.

Hi happytraveller, many thanks for joining us. Yeah, I'm sure this is momentary. Things in general zip along. Lots of factors involved, too:

1) uploading: your speed, and the quality of your connection - have a go at the line quality test that's linked on this help page, and give us back the link that's in the results: http://www.smugmug.com/help/problems

2) general browsing - again, lots of factors, what will really help us is if you can give us a traceroute from you to us: http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?p=370725#post370725

Thanks

happytraveller · August 26, 2006

tracer route

Andy wrote:

Hi happytraveller, many thanks for joining us. Yeah, I'm sure this is momentary. Things in general zip along. Lots of factors involved, too:

1) uploading: your speed, and the quality of your connection - have a go at the line quality test that's linked on this help page, and give us back the link that's in the results: http://www.smugmug.com/help/problems

2) general browsing - again, lots of factors, what will really help us is if you can give us a traceroute from you to us: http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?p=370725#post370725

Thanks

Thank's Andy.

Tracing route to hera.smugmug.com [63.81.134.23]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 34 ms 6 ms 5 ms 10.232.92.1
2 15 ms 9 ms 7 ms renf-t2cam1-a-v135.inet.ntl.com [80.4.65.217]
3 13 ms 8 ms 8 ms renf-t2core-a-ge-wan63.inet.ntl.com [62.254.191.
65]
4 10 ms 7 ms 6 ms ren-bb-a-so-200-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.184.81]
5 19 ms 19 ms 17 ms bre-bb-b-so-110-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.185.166]
6 35 ms 23 ms 23 ms telc-ic-1-so-700-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.185.74]
7 19 ms 17 ms 17 ms lon.he.net [195.66.226.21]
8 88 ms 90 ms 99 ms pos4-1.gsr12416.nyc.he.net [216.218.200.101]
9 158 ms 155 ms 181 ms pos0-1.gsr12416.sjc2.he.net [216.218.223.133]
10 158 ms 156 ms 156 ms pri.r1-ge0-2-eq-sj.smugmug.com [206.223.117.70]
11 158 ms 159 ms 159 ms hera.smugmug.com [63.81.134.23]
Trace complete.

Here's my tracer route. Not sure if it's good or bad, but smugmug is still slower than any other site.

Oh, I'm on Windows XP, using the latest IE. (please don't judge me!)

happytraveller.

Andy · August 26, 2006

happytraveller wrote:

Oh, I'm on Windows XP, using the latest IE. (please don't judge me!)

happytraveller.

we don't judge anyone

thanks I'll make sure Wireless sees this.

mdraughn · August 26, 2006

Incident Report
In another thread, Baldy mentioned that this site had stunning photos, so I took a look:

http://smhs-images.smugmug.com/

When I clicked on the upper left-hand image, there was a very long pause before the "popular photos" page appeared. I'm not talking about the load time for all those thumbnails, this was before they started. After it loaded, I clicked refresh, and it only took 2 or 3 seconds before the thumbnails started loading.

As soon as I saw the problem with the first page, I launched a traceroute:

Tracing route to smhs-images.smugmug.com [63.81.134.23]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 * * * Request timed out.
2 13 ms 15 ms 14 ms 220.ge-0-1-0.cr2.chi1.speakeasy.net [69.17.83.15
3]
3 15 ms 14 ms 14 ms rt1ec-equinix.il.shawcable.net [206.223.119.20]
4 14 ms 15 ms 14 ms rc2ch-pos4-0.il.shawcable.net [66.163.65.13]
5 14 ms 15 ms 15 ms rc1ch-ge1-0-0.il.shawcable.net [66.163.65.1]
6 73 ms 73 ms 73 ms rc2sj-pos0-0.cl.shawcable.net [66.163.77.74]
7 * * * Request timed out.
8 75 ms 75 ms 75 ms hera.smugmug.com [63.81.134.23]
Trace complete.

Good luck.

jww · August 28, 2006

mdraughn wrote:

In another thread, Baldy mentioned that this site had stunning photos, so I took a look:

http://smhs-images.smugmug.com/

When I clicked on the upper left-hand image, there was a very long pause before the "popular photos" page appeared. I'm not talking about the load time for all those thumbnails, this was before they started. After it loaded, I clicked refresh, and it only took 2 or 3 seconds before the thumbnails started loading.

As soon as I saw the problem with the first page, I launched a traceroute:

Tracing route to smhs-images.smugmug.com [63.81.134.23]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 * * * Request timed out.
2 13 ms 15 ms 14 ms 220.ge-0-1-0.cr2.chi1.speakeasy.net [69.17.83.15
3]
3 15 ms 14 ms 14 ms rt1ec-equinix.il.shawcable.net [206.223.119.20]
4 14 ms 15 ms 14 ms rc2ch-pos4-0.il.shawcable.net [66.163.65.13]
5 14 ms 15 ms 15 ms rc1ch-ge1-0-0.il.shawcable.net [66.163.65.1]
6 73 ms 73 ms 73 ms rc2sj-pos0-0.cl.shawcable.net [66.163.77.74]
7 * * * Request timed out.
8 75 ms 75 ms 75 ms hera.smugmug.com [63.81.134.23]
Trace complete.

Good luck.

Hi SmugMug,

Any updates? I still see some occasional slowdowns, but not like it was last week. I haven't seen any responses to the trace routes given to you. Did this become a non issue??

thanks,
jww - jwwwebdesign.smugmug.com

Andy · August 28, 2006

jww wrote:

Hi SmugMug,

Any updates? I still see some occasional slowdowns, but not like it was last week. I haven't seen any responses to the trace routes given to you. Did this become a non issue??

thanks,
jww - jwwwebdesign.smugmug.com

It's a very important issue - and Wireless will respond when he can - it's been a busy couple of weeks/weekends, moving data center and installing new gear. Stay tuned and thanks for your patience.

BeachBill · August 28, 2006

Page loading / timeout issues are back this morning. Sometimes it's just one or two thumbnails not loading and other times the initial page load is timing out. Traceroute is fine:

Tracing route to hera.smugmug.com [63.81.134.23]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms <deleted for privacy>
2 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms <deleted for privacy>
3 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms <deleted for privacy>
4 2 ms 2 ms 2 ms 12.127.139.85
5 3 ms 3 ms 3 ms gbr6-p80.la2ca.ip.att.net [12.123.199.206]
6 4 ms 3 ms 4 ms tbr2-p013601.la2ca.ip.att.net [12.122.11.157]
7 3 ms 2 ms 2 ms gar2-p3152.lsnca.ip.att.net [12.123.222.61]
8 2 ms 3 ms 4 ms 12.118.42.26
9 20 ms 14 ms 14 ms tge1-3.fr3.sjc.llnw.net [69.28.171.118]
10 13 ms 12 ms 12 ms e5-3.fr1.sjc.llnw.net [69.28.148.129]
11 15 ms 13 ms 14 ms pri.r1-ge0-2-eq-sj.smugmug.com [206.223.117.70]

12 16 ms 17 ms 15 ms hera.smugmug.com [63.81.134.23]

Trace complete.

DodgeV83 · August 28, 2006

My page has also been having trouble today

jww · August 28, 2006

Andy wrote:

It's a very important issue - and Wireless will respond when he can - it's been a busy couple of weeks/weekends, moving data center and installing new gear. Stay tuned and thanks for your patience.

Hi Andy,

Thanks for your reply.

I didn't realize that you were moving a data center and installing new gear. I hadn't seen that in any of the posts or announcements. Perhaps that is part of the problem?

Last week you had suggested that it was probably due to my huge albums and in thumbnail view which was not the case. Seeing how others are also experiencing the issue, I figured it was a larger priority, but concerned that no real resolution or root cause had yet been identified, or at least been shared in this thread.

Thanks for your help,
jww - www.jwwwebdesign.smugmug.com

SmugMug sloooow at times

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