56 replies to this topic

[posaune]

Saturday 26 th, 17.21 hours Franfurt Germany
Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at www.cutterandtailor.com.
lg
posaune

[Der Zuschneider]

November, 27 22:53 Houston time

[Sator]

The latest update from the server support desk:

Our apologies for the delay. We're waiting for our server provider to get the new server provisioned. The server has not been fully provisioned for us yet, and we're waiting on the provider to get that done. As soon as it is, we will begin moving accounts to it.

Thank you once again for your patience.

[Sator]

An update. The board was moved to a new server about 24 hours ago:

that took rather longer than we had hoped, but the account has been moved to the new server. The old server has a message saying the site has moved. If anyone gets that message, they need to either flush their DNS cache or wait for their IPS's DNS servers get updated. But all is well, and the board is loading very quickly now.

I noticed that at least one member has problem logging in. I hope that all of these problems have been resolved now.

[ct3d]

I noticed that at least one member has problem logging in. I hope that all of these problems have been resolved now.

Might have been me. Frankly, I was surprised how unprofessional that was handled by the ISP. Change the IP address a name resolves to <shaking my head>. We make endless contortions to keep the same IP address for a site at all costs.

In any case, it took a few hours, then our DNS was updated and I could reach the forum again. (I could have manually checked which IP address www.cutterandtailer.com resolves to now, but I could not be bothered.)

[eboli]

02 December 2011 09.30 CET (Wien). For some time hadn't any connection.

[Schneidergott]

Haven't had any problems since the server move. Could it be that they lower the bandwidth during our CET hours (the server is still in the US, right)?

Edit: No connection at around 11.40 CET! Back at 11.45 CET! Weird!

[ACECAPS]

today, i was unable to get on the forum for about at least 3 hrs. ca betewwen 14:00 and 17:00 hrs european c.t.
i believe there are too many folks tryin´to log on ...

Edited by ACECAPS, 05 December 2011 - 02:26 AM.

[Sator]

Yes, it looks like the problem now is too many people on the forum. The support desk has automatically upgraded the forum package to the next level ie it will cost more money to support the forum.

[Sator]

I have now set up the forum so that you have to be logged in to view the Professional areas. This is in an effort to reduce the traffic to the website. If the forum grows any bigger, it could become a bit more of a financial burden.

[Sator]

It looks like the forum is being swamped by absurdly aggressive spiders/crawlers. In particular the Baidu robot is hitting the forum really aggressively. I am looking into ways to block server access. There are currently well over a dozen Baidu robots trying to crawl the forum at one and the same time.

I have currently turned off open access to the forum (you have to log in to see the forum at all). However, because the forum is set up to allow search engines like Google and Yahoo in, it also tends to let in some other more dubious crawlers. I am looking into how to limit access, and am temporarily blocking search engine crawler access to the forum.

But bear with me... I am not very tech savvy... (ie I have no clue)

[Sator]

Update: the Baidu spiders crawling the forum in huge hoards have been blocked at server level. Hurray! I read that on one forum there were 450 of them crawling at once and they brought it to its knees. Maybe that's what has been happening to us.

[ladhrann]

Hello Sator,

Thats fantastic news. I rely on this forum so much as it is the only one extant where real tailors meet real customers I think. Its absolutely invaluable for the list of suppliers, weavers, trimmings etc. and for the list of working tailors. I've had a few minor heart-attacks when unable to re-read the Bespeakers' Guide section!!

Thanks once again for maintaining this fantastic resource.

[armscye]

I had been finding the forum frequently becoming inaccessible with a 'cannot find server' type of error. I looked into this and it's a problem with DNS, the "phone book" used to convert a name like www.cutterandtailor.com to a numeric IP addresses needed to actually access it. A lot of the time, the DNS server provided by my ISP "forgets the forum's number" - I tried the server of a different provider and that looses it too, though less frequently. Probably something behind the scenes in how the different DNS servers update each other is not working right. I ended up switching my computer to include the DNS server provided by opendns.org as well as the ones suggested by the cable company, and so far that has lead to consistent access, even at times when a computer still using only the cable modem company's DNS can't access the forum. If someone else with this problem wants to try it, there are instructions for making the change at the opendns site. But this is very specific to that specific type of problem - it won't help with anything caused by load or downtime of the forum itself.

[ct3d]

I had been finding the forum frequently becoming inaccessible with a 'cannot find server' type of error. I looked into this and it's a problem with DNS, the "phone book" used to convert a name like www.cutterandtailor.com to a numeric IP addresses needed to actually access it. A lot of the time, the DNS server provided by my ISP "forgets the forum's number" - I tried the server of a different provider and that looses it too, though less frequently. Probably something behind the scenes in how the different DNS servers update each other is not working right. I ended up switching my computer to include the DNS server provided by opendns.org as well as the ones suggested by the cable company, and so far that has lead to consistent access, even at times when a computer still using only the cable modem company's DNS can't access the forum. If someone else with this problem wants to try it, there are instructions for making the change at the opendns site. But this is very specific to that specific type of problem - it won't help with anything caused by load or downtime of the forum itself.

I get that with maddening regularity, too, ever since the server moved and the IP address was changed. I also happen to know that my companies' DNS server doesn't 'loose' the DNS entry once it has it. Meaning: If I can access the forum on Tuesday, I *should* be able to access it on Wednesday. Nogo. The DNS entry 'comes back' about 1-2 hours later. (It is usually inaccessible around 4:30am UTC, twice a week at least). It shouldn't have been invalidated in the first place. Unless the ISP where this forum is hosted switches the IP address around on a regular basis, necessitating frequent DNS updates.

[armscye]

I get that with maddening regularity, too, ever since the server moved and the IP address was changed. I also happen to know that my companies' DNS server doesn't 'loose' the DNS entry once it has it. Meaning: If I can access the forum on Tuesday, I *should* be able to access it on Wednesday. Nogo. The DNS entry 'comes back' about 1-2 hours later. (It is usually inaccessible around 4:30am UTC, twice a week at least). It shouldn't have been invalidated in the first place. Unless the ISP where this forum is hosted switches the IP address around on a regular basis, necessitating frequent DNS updates.

The IP address changing and not propagating correctly might be involved (though note it's not getting a stale address, it's failing to get any address). I'm less concerned about blame for the various servers not playing nice together than simply being able to read the forum, so far opendns has worked.

As a test, next time it's down for you try manually resolving the name through opendns and see if you get an answer - on a unix-like OS you could do something like

shell> nslookup www.cutterandtailor.com 208.67.222.222

Where the appended IP is that of opendns's name server to do the lookup through that rather than your configured DNS

Edited by armscye, 17 April 2012 - 01:13 AM.

[Der Zuschneider]

After 9pm to 12am the forum is unreachable from the U.S. every day.

[ladhrann]

I have been unable to access the fora for a number of months now. This is the first time since February that I have been able to log on. Nor have any of the articles/posts been accessible.