spec of the forums server?

ghgh · 26 Nov 2006 at 17:19

Hi there,

I was curious as to the spec of the pc these forums are hosted on as they're by far the fastest loading forums ive used.

regards,
ghgh

cleanbluesky · 26 Nov 2006 at 17:24

Now that you mention it, they are niippy...

We used to be able to slashdot it before the upgrade

Sone · 26 Nov 2006 at 17:26

was a K6-2 at one time, used to cause a few laughs

Valo · 26 Nov 2006 at 17:40

I'm almost certain the K6-2 was upgraded to a Xeon of some sort - I think it may be a Dell Rack Server of some sort, sitting on a pretty heavy duty leased line at a dedicated host

What ever it is it works extremely well, so thanks Spie as you pay for all this out of your own pocket...without asking for a penny from us in return to use it

basmic · 26 Nov 2006 at 17:51

It's only just occured to me, that I can't remember the last time these forums were down - apart from September 11th.

Gaverick · 26 Nov 2006 at 17:56

My internet goes down more often than these forums

iBot · 26 Nov 2006 at 17:59

If only they updated vBulletin more often it would be perfect

Werewolf · 26 Nov 2006 at 18:00

it's a ZX spectrum with the 128k ram upgrade and a 1.2k audio coupler modem.

Craig321 · 26 Nov 2006 at 18:00

Werewolf said:
it's a ZX spectrum with the 128k ram upgrade and a 1.2k audio coupler modem.

Sweet, no wonder it's so fast

Andr3w · 26 Nov 2006 at 18:02

how much would that cost?

Amp34 · 26 Nov 2006 at 18:02

cleanbluesky said:
We used to be able to slashdot it before the upgrade

I think it may be a Dell Rack Server of some sort, sitting on a pretty heavy duty leased line at a dedicated host

It seems the actual forums dont tak up that much bandwidth due to the fact all there really is to be downloaded from the server is the forum code and the posts, all photos and images are hosted on different servers.

A 1Mb line perhaps (up and down)?

cleanbluesky · 26 Nov 2006 at 18:06

Amp34 said:

Does slashdot not refer to lots of people trying to access something at the same time, and it taking 4 ****ing ever to load?

Craig321 · 26 Nov 2006 at 18:06

Amp34 said:
It seems the actual forums dont tak up that much bandwidth due to the fact all there really is to be downloaded from the server is the forum code and the posts, all photos and images are hosted on different servers.

A 1Mb line perhaps (up and down)?

1mb, are you crazy?

There are, at times, up to a thousand people sending and reading text, making the forum run MySQL queries all the time. There's no way this forum is hosted on a 1mb line :eek:

The forums probably don't take too much bandwidth as it is just text being sent and received - no images or media, but I'm sure quite a fair bit of bandwidth, and mainly server power gets used.

(Sorry if the above sounds like I'm trying to start an argument, I'm not

)

Cob · 26 Nov 2006 at 18:08

Amp34 said:

It's when a story is linked from Slashdot and the ensuing clickathon brings down the site where the story appeared.

Berserker · 26 Nov 2006 at 18:09

Of course it's not on a 1MB line. It's in a datacentre in London with proper bandwidth.

zetec452 · 26 Nov 2006 at 18:10

It will most likely have a 100mbit internet connection.

Slime101 · 26 Nov 2006 at 18:10

Amp34 said:
It seems the actual forums dont tak up that much bandwidth due to the fact all there really is to be downloaded from the server is the forum code and the posts, all photos and images are hosted on different servers.

A 1Mb line perhaps (up and down)?

The forums use a huge ammount, and cost a fortune to run. they are hosted in docklands, london connected through fibre to level3

Beansprout · 26 Nov 2006 at 18:12

Craig321 said:
1mb, are you crazy?

There are, at times, up to a thousand people sending and reading text, making the forum run MySQL queries all the time. There's no way this forum is hosted on a 1mb line

(Sorry if the above sounds like I'm trying to start an argument, I'm not )

You'd be surprised how little bandwidth lots of compressed text uses

Couple of mbit/sec or so, I'd expect.

Nothing special is needed to host forums of this size nowadays. It's just a standard, cut-down vB install with a few hundred users on, and RAM is cheap.

I'd expect something along the lines of a dual CPU, dual core system with some form of SCSI RAID and a few Gb RAM.

But yeah, certainly not a cheap £100/mo box

jamoor · 26 Nov 2006 at 18:13

Hmm, both SA and MSE seem a tad faster, is there any way of finding out.
Edit - actually pistonheads is fast too.

refuzion · 26 Nov 2006 at 18:17

I'm guessing the server is colocated in the London Red Bus Datacenter. Actually, there are probably atleast 2 servers; 1 for the database, 1 for the forum itself.

A business such as OcUK would take the spec of its servers very seriously as I would guess that the shop is located on the same servers.