Ever since you went back to the Novell Login (which, why did you do that? I’ve ‘loved’ Novell since the early 1990’s, but this is crazy) Every time I click on a link, any link I wait minutes, hours, whatever… Then, if I ‘stop’ the load and click reload or f5 it usually goes, but not always…
It suck and I know I should not complain, for free, don’t *****… I know and I’m sorry, just venting…
Landis.
During this recent “enhancement”, I experienced these (and other!) problems. I found that if you 1) close all tabs/windows that use any URL ending in .opensuse.org and/or .novell.com, 2) manually delete ALL cookies with those same URL endings, then 3) restart Firefox/Chrome/whatever, that MOST (but NOT all) of the access problems are resolved.
That being said, …
These recent changes to Forum access are not, IMNSHO, an improvement. Forum usage is still easiest without log in, and the recaptcha requirement for search further encumbers usage. Posting replies is a further problem, as one must be aware of the now implemented one (1) hour, non-rolling timeout. This timeout requirement is quite unreasonable, and counter-productive. I can only infer that the timeout has been implemented, under the aegis of a “security” feature, to manage a limited server capacity.
I do know, as a matter of experience, that the fora of two other distros do not have this timeout (at least, not a one hour limit). While I am not suggesting that forum access might motivate a distro switch (it would not), this “feature” may tend to have a discouraging effect on new/newer users.
I frankly hold little hope of some amelioration of these problems in the near future. I have looked at the NNTP interface, and at first blush is not my cup of tea.
My apologies to any offense taken for ranting. While I do remember Mark Twain’s thoughts on silence, silence is too often viewed as consent and acceptance.
What is this “timeout” you are referring to?
As you stated, I am experiencing very slow connections/no connections on and off throughout the day for the past month. I’m in the U.S.
On Tue, 10 Jan 2012 06:06:03 +0000, andyprough wrote:
> What is this “timeout” you are referring to?
A session timeout.
> As you stated, I am experiencing very slow connections/no connections on
> and off throughout the day for the past month. I’m in the U.S.
You might try doing a traceroute to forums.opensuse.org and see what
route you’re taking to get here. The servers are connected via at least
a single DS3 to the Internet (and ISTR it’s more than that), chances are
there’s a slow hop between you and the server.
Jim
–
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C
Thanks Jim. It’s taking me 17 steps to get there. Eleven of them are in Texas, and (I assume) are required by my local ISP. I wonder if there is a way to bypass some of these? Here is the list once it appears that the traceroute leaves Texas:
12 152.63.96.142 42.213 ms 52.271 ms 45.934 ms
13 POS6-0.GW3.DEN4.ALTER.NET (152.63.72.69) 45.595 ms 47.055 ms 44.646 ms
14 unknown.customer.alter.net (65.206.183.22) 56.326 ms 54.232 ms 48.835 ms
15 192.94.118.247 56.098 ms 58.451 ms 50.410 ms
16 * * *
17 cot.novell.com (130.57.4.15) [open] 56.385 ms * 61.227 ms
On Wed, 11 Jan 2012 05:46:02 +0000, andyprough wrote:
> Thanks Jim. It’s taking me 17 steps to get there. Eleven of them are in
> Texas, and (I assume) are required by my local ISP. I wonder if there is
> a way to bypass some of these?
Not really, no - certainly not without knowing what their network looks
like - but what kind of ping times do you see from those nodes?
Jim
–
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C
Ping times for nodes 12 through 16 are all between 48ms and 55ms. All attempts to ping the final node [cot.novell.com (130.57.4.15)] time out. Pinging forums.opensuse.org by name times out.
On 01/11/2012 03:56 PM, andyprough wrote:
>
> hendersj;2429019 Wrote:
>>
>> Not really, no - certainly not without knowing what their network looks
>> like - but what kind of ping times do you see from those nodes?
>>
>
> Ping times for nodes 12 through 16 are all between 48ms and 55ms. All
> attempts to ping the final node [cot.novell.com (130.57.4.15)] time out.
> Pinging forums.opensuse.org by name times out.
this is all very strange…
i guess ping is not actually timing out on forums.opensuse.org, instead
i guess it is not responding to ping requests…and, i think Jim
actually meant not to ask about ping times (though, i do think that not
long ago it was possible to ping the forum IP…perhaps what ever was
changed is affecting the OP’s perceived slowness…
traceroute from here ends at 192.94.118.247 (at OP’s hop #15) which
DNStuff tags as a Novell asset:
ASN Name: NOVELL
IP range connectivity: 6
Registrar (per ASN): ARIN
Country (per IP registrar): US [United States]
Country Currency: USD [United States Dollars]
Country IP Range: 192.94.118.0 to 192.94.119.255
in my case the hop time (from a UUNET point) to the Novell entry is ~184 ms
i wonder why the OP’s trace shows info on cot.novell.com (130.57.4.15)
at #17 ?
@andyprough as an exercise in experimentation, why not try setting
google’s free dns (known to work well with IPv6) and see if your
slowness ceases, do that by following the info here:
http://tinyurl.com/c9a3utb
it is easy to back out if it doesn’t help…(by the way: this experiment
is a ‘hail mary’)
–
DD http://tinyurl.com/DD-Caveat http://tinyurl.com/DD-Hardware
http://tinyurl.com/DD-Software
openSUSE®, the “German Engineered Automobiles” of operating systems!
On Wed, 11 Jan 2012 15:44:25 +0000, DenverD wrote:
> i guess ping is not actually timing out on forums.opensuse.org, instead
> i guess it is not responding to ping requests…and, i think Jim
> actually meant not to ask about ping times (though, i do think that not
> long ago it was possible to ping the forum IP…perhaps what ever was
> changed is affecting the OP’s perceived slowness…
No, I did mean to ask about ping times, the 3 times in a traceroute give
the average time to each hop along the way.
Jim
–
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C
Thanks for this, DenverD. I had heard about Google’s DNS in the press awhile back, but had not thought to try it. So far, it seems to be fairly responsive for general usage. But, I am still getting the same problem when connecting with the openSUSE forums.
Do you want to see all my ping times from the traceroute Jim? Looks like at least a couple of the nodes do not ping.
On Wed, 11 Jan 2012 17:06:02 +0000, andyprough wrote:
> hendersj;2429207 Wrote:
>> No, I did mean to ask about ping times, the 3 times in a traceroute
>> give the average time to each hop along the way.’’
>> (http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C)
>
> Do you want to see all my ping times from the traceroute Jim? Looks like
> at least a couple of the nodes do not ping.
A few nodes are likely to not respond as some of the nodes are probably
configured to not respond to ping.
I’d give the DNS change a try and see if that helps. It’s possible that
your system is timing out a lookup (maybe you’ve got IPv6 enabled and
your network doesn’t - you might disable IPv6 on the system as well).
Jim
–
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C
On 01/11/2012 05:45 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> No, I did mean to ask about ping times, the 3 times in a traceroute give
> the average time to each hop along the way.
hmmmmm…sorry, i didn’t know that those times were in response to a
ping from any machine to any other machine…i don’t think ping is
involved at any point during a traceroute…
i thought the traceroute times were the actual time it takes to transit
from one hop to the next…
i think ping and traceroute use different protocols and methods to do
very different things (ping timing from here to there and back; and
traceroute timing from here to A to B to C etc etc…)
–
DD
openSUSE®, the “German Engineered Automobiles” of operating systems!
On Wed, 11 Jan 2012 20:20:18 +0000, DenverD wrote:
> On 01/11/2012 05:45 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> No, I did mean to ask about ping times, the 3 times in a traceroute
>> give the average time to each hop along the way.
>
> hmmmmm…sorry, i didn’t know that those times were in response to a
> ping from any machine to any other machine…i don’t think ping is
> involved at any point during a traceroute…
>
> i thought the traceroute times were the actual time it takes to transit
> from one hop to the next…
Ping measures response time to the node, effectively this is the same
thing as going through and pinging each node.
> i think ping and traceroute use different protocols and methods to do
> very different things (ping timing from here to there and back; and
> traceroute timing from here to A to B to C etc etc…)
Yes, they do behave somewhat differently, but what they measure is the
same - how long it takes for information to get from point A to point B,
which is what I’m interested in.
Jim
–
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C
Hi Jim, The Google DNS seems better. However, I notice that if I try to open two or more links from forums.opensuse.org at the same time then I get hung up. But, maybe the forums are administered in such a way as to discourage opening more than one link at a time?
On Thu, 12 Jan 2012 03:46:02 +0000, andyprough wrote:
> Hi Jim, The Google DNS seems better. However, I notice that if I try to
> open two or more links from forums.opensuse.org at the same time then I
> get hung up. But, maybe the forums are administered in such a way as to
> discourage opening more than one link at a time?
Nope, the server doesn’t care if you have one or fifty connections to it.
But it sounds like progress is being made, which is a good thing. 
Jim
–
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C
OK, good. Then it’s probably something wrong on my end - either my internal network, or my ISP’s routing. It seems like as long as I don’t try to do too much too fast on the forums then it’s working well now. I’ve got to get my ISP out to the office to fix a bad cable jack, so I’ll see if I can speak to someone who can tell me if this type of thing is a known problem for them, and if they have any type of workaround. Thanks for your help!
On Thu, 12 Jan 2012 19:26:03 +0000, andyprough wrote:
> hendersj;2429610 Wrote:
>> Nope, the server doesn’t care if you have one or fifty connections to
>> it.
>>
>> But it sounds like progress is being made, which is a good thing.
>
> OK, good. Then it’s probably something wrong on my end - either my
> internal network, or my ISP’s routing. It seems like as long as I don’t
> try to do too much too fast on the forums then it’s working well now.
> I’ve got to get my ISP out to the office to fix a bad cable jack, so
> I’ll see if I can speak to someone who can tell me if this type of thing
> is a known problem for them, and if they have any type of workaround.
> Thanks for your help!
Sounds good - glad I was able to help.
Jim
–
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C
On 01/12/2012 08:26 PM, andyprough wrote:
> I’ll see if I can speak to someone who can tell me if this type of thing
> is a known problem for them, and if they have any type of workaround.
sometimes it is best to avoid one word when talking with the cable guy:
linux.
–
DD http://tinyurl.com/DD-Caveat
openSUSE®, the “German Engineered Automobiles” of operating systems!
I pay extra for a business account, and I have no choice but to run linux to do my work, as the available Windows software is not powerful enough. So I don’t let them push me around regarding my OS. They seem to be much more understanding these days, especially since so many people are running Apple stuff. It used to be strictly a Windows world when dealing with those guys, but that is one positive effect of so many people running their Macs - the service companies have to support Unix-type environments.