UGO is the culpit!

[The Call of Snapcase]

Not only is UGO the perpetrator of stupid ads aimed at misogynists and children, they are also solely and completely responsible for the slowdowns and disruptions apolyton has been having. Look at this traceroute:

<font size="2"><tt> 1 128 ms 112 ms 122 ms t1o3.telia.com [194.22.192.247]
2 121 ms 118 ms 140 ms apv-a6-feth3-0-access.stockholm.telia.net [194.22.192.253]
3 104 ms 121 ms 119 ms apv-d1-feth0-1-dist.stockholm.telia.net [195.67.159.2]
4 108 ms 288 ms 240 ms apv-c1-feth10-1-0-core.stockholm.telia.net [195.67.159.73]
5 120 ms 107 ms 122 ms ov-b1-atm3-0-1.telia.net [194.17.1.69]
6 117 ms 120 ms 118 ms sto-b1-atm2-0-1.telia.net [194.17.1.161]
7 109 ms 119 ms 110 ms sto-b2-pos4-0.telia.net [194.17.1.89]
8 221 ms 227 ms 209 ms 193.45.5.30
9 211 ms 212 ms 230 ms ny-i8-atm2-0-208.us.telia.net [209.95.128.166]
10 237 ms 228 ms 204 ms sl-gw5-nyc-6-0-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.171.109]
11 232 ms 242 ms 225 ms sl-gw12-nyc-0-0-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.13.229]
12 * * * Begäran gjorde time-out.
13 * * * Begäran gjorde time-out.
14 * * * Begäran gjorde time-out.</tt></font>

(Begäran=Request) Needless to say, letting it continue only produces more timeouts.

Why do you keep being affiliated with a company that spews out filth, disrupts your traffic, destroys the surfing experience and scares away your customers? It's a mystery to me.

[Lazarus & the Gimp]

I can't say I understand the above post, but the ads certainly drive me to distraction.

[MarkG]

ugo is unrelated to the slowdowns of the last week....

[John-SJ]

Snapcase,

what is the address of your original tracert command? I'd like to try those experiments myself. Thanks,

John-SJ

[SnowFire]

Hugo is correct. You need only look at the little status bar on the bottom in Netscape to see that very often, "adserver.ugo.com" is what is being waited for. For no appearent reason, though the rest of the page is loaded, it does not appear until the UGO ad finally comes up (even if you hit stop).

All I ask is that the UGO ads be stuck somewhere so that the page loads first, then the ads, and if the ads can't be reached then the page still can be used fine.

[Urban Ranger]

Did you use traceroute with the UGO server?

[Scouse Gits]

Yup - looks much the same from here ...

C:\Windows>tracert adserver.ugo.com

Tracing route to adserver.ugo.com [205.229.74.190]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1     2 ms     1 ms     1 ms  [removed for security reasons]
  2     1 ms     *        2 ms  
  3     3 ms     2 ms     2 ms  
  4     7 ms     5 ms     4 ms  gw-metro.netnw.net.uk [194.66.24.250]
  5     4 ms     4 ms     5 ms  nw-gw.ja.net [146.97.255.177]
  6    14 ms    19 ms    16 ms  ext-gw3.ja.net [193.62.157.81]
  7    14 ms    14 ms    14 ms  linx-gw.ja.net [128.86.1.249]
  8    14 ms    14 ms    15 ms  Ldn-nr12.UK.EU.net [195.66.225.90]
  9    18 ms    16 ms    15 ms  Ldn-nr06.UK.EU.net [134.222.229.217]
 10    23 ms    22 ms    23 ms  Ledn-cr01.NL.EU.net [134.222.228.245]
 11   115 ms   115 ms   115 ms  Nyk-cr02.NY.US.EU.net [134.222.229.194]
 12   106 ms   104 ms   104 ms  jfk-core-01.inet.qwest.net [205.171.30.145]
 13   104 ms   106 ms   104 ms  jfk-edge-01.inet.qwest.net [205.171.30.86]
 14    99 ms   100 ms   101 ms  205.171.40.54
 15     *        *        *     Request timed out.

[The Call of Snapcase]

John-SJ: adserver.ugo.com was the adress I used. But MarkG is right, I seemed to have acted harshly. (sorry!) The same result appears when tracerouting when the ads work perfectly. The thing is, pinging apolyton when its down results in totally normal ping times. Before, there has always been a connection between high ping times and bad connections to apolyton.

So, Mark, you wouldn't be able to divulge at least a little bit of info about what's actually going on?

[MarkG]

simply, the server has too much traffic. more than it can handle. be sure that we are working on it's iffeciency....

[Urban Ranger]

Perhaps they have an ICMP filter at adserver.ugo.com to block ping packets?

[MarkG]

that is very possible
you can do nasty things with a innocent ping(or many innocent pings)....

[The Call of Snapcase]

But if the server's lack of bandwith is the problem, why does pinging it during off-times not produce more timeouts? I mean, it seems to be giving out normal ping-times of about 200-300 ms.

[MarkG]

i was not talking about the bandwidth(the connection of the server to the internet) but about the ability of the server to execute the requests it gets. replying to ping is "easy". parsing a html page or executing a cgi is not as "easy"...

[The Call of Snapcase]

Okay. Thanks for the info. Do make an announcement if any change is definately forthcoming, will you? It's beginning to get annoying, and it is certainly hurting this site as well. Many people are complaining about it... A stable, fast server is really something most expect from leading internet sites these days.

[DanQ]

It's beginning to get annoying, and it is certainly hurting this site as well. Many people are complaining about it... A stable, fast server is really something most expect from leading internet sites these days.

We, and GameStats, are doing the best that we can. Unfortunately, server upgrades such as this are both time consuming and costly in terms of purchasing, setup and, of course, ongoing maintenance. That said, GS is looking into solutions to better the loading times (amongst other things) of the network.

We thank you for your continued patience.

----------------
Dan; Apolyton CS