Mikrotik Forum has gotten quite slow

Lately the forum has become quite slow resulting in poor user experience.

From ‘click to click’ browsing on threads and categories, it can take up to 3seconds for the requests to be processed and served by the server.

http://prntscr.com/c13can
As shown in the screenshot above, the browser will wait for 3+ seconds for the server to process and serve the request. It then takes only 103ms for the browser to receive the results from the server. So it’s clear that the delays are server-side and not in transit or client-side.

Static content is served fast. Only dynamic content is slow.

So, it seems that the server forum.mikrotik.com runs on cannot handle the load any more, or there’s some other issue (bot crawling?) causing these delays.
There are (random) times that some requests are processed in 200-500ms which is acceptable (in terms on UX) but most of the time nowadays the waiting times are between 1-3seconds which result in bad UX.


By the way, it would be nice to have SSL/TLS on forum.mikrotik.com. It’s free nowadays

Can you open browser developer tools, Timeline, and check what is the thing that loads the slowest?
We have not seen any slow loading here.

SSL is coming soon.

http://prntscr.com/c13mog

Same results.

Actually firebug’s developer tools are pretty much the same as Firefox’s native developer tools.

Sorry, didn’t see the first picture. I am seeing also that it is slower than usual, but not 3 seconds. I will make sure our admins investigate.

Here is mine:

Try http://forum.mikrotik.com/viewforum.php?f=2
On this category I get constant 3+ second waiting time.
I just retried and got 8seconds this time! http://prntscr.com/c13s4b

On index page, or other categories or threads the waiting times are indeed better (but still anything over 1second is bad in terms of UX).

Thanks for looking into this

The problem persists and it’s way worse the last few days making forum browsing intolerable!

4.4 Seconds to open this thread.

6.8 Seconds to open the forum index.

The forum was very slow earlier today (2-3 hours ago) but now it is fine.

I am reviving this thread because I see another delay lately.

Browsing is ok now, but whenever posting a new post it will take many many seconds.
Previewing the same post prior to posting it works as fast as expected.

I presume there’s an issue with phpBB’s mail configuration. It will only get super slow when it actually performs a function (such as posting) that involves mail functions.

Here’s the screenshot for the post I made above. It took 8seconds.
Screenshot_8.png

I also noticed it slow for a few days. For me it was the worst when clicking reply and waiting for the page to load and then when trying to post. It was 10+ seconds for those pages.
It does seem better at the time of this post. I noticed a SQL connection error one night but I assume it was maintenance.

My last post took 21seconds! This has gotten pretty bad!

It surely must be mail related since previewing or editing a post (which doesn’t invoke any mail functions) is lightning fast!
But posting a new post takes forever to do.

Has by any chance any of the MikroTik staff looked into this?

I have seen this as well. Taking long time for the post to show up after you click submit.

Edit. This post did take 10 seconds.

Also, why do I not see in the forum where I have posted. On other phpBB I get a small star showing that I have posted in this thread.

Edit 2: Edit at post and click submit, takes less than one second.

Edit 3: If you change Board style from Canvas to Prosilver, you get the star show you where you have post. So this is a bug in Canvas style

Another observation.
Preview of a new post is quick. Showing opp nearly at the same time as I push the button. But when post it, wait, wait, wait…
So it need to be a server/phpbb/db problem. Not at the client side.

The forum has to think about your post.

Another observation that backs up my theory about bad mail configuration (or something related to that) on the forum.

Posting a new thread (which obviously no one is subscribed to) takes 2-3seconds.
Posting a reply to a thread with other replies (and quite possibly people subscribed to) takes 10-20seconds.

I get this is a community forum provided by MikroTik for free, but come on… it shouldn’t be THAT hard to fix this issue.

This forum uses phpBB, and maybe some mods.
I have owned some phpBB forum my self and never seen this type of slow post speed.
If you add a post to a thread, it takes 10 seconds. If you later edit same post, its quick.
So its some thing that takes a long time to handle within the forum some place.