Website Performance Feedback

I will start this thread with a simple question:

Is anyone else having problems with the sites performance? In particular the streaming of Mp3's when listening to tracks that have already been posted? Most all other functions seem to be ok. I can upload and download just fine.

I've noticed a considerable drop in performance the last few months which is slowly becoming worse. I've messaged a couple people here and asked if they are having problems and most replies are: "yes, but only at certain times that it is intolerable".

I've tried all I know with my PC and internet provider to fix this, but to no avail.

I'm wondering if anyone has an idea. I use Chrome which seems to work the best.

One request from my end:
Please, if you do experience similar problems and are willing to give feedback about this,
do add your location (country is enough) and the wikiloops shoutbox-time of the moment / time of day you experienced trouble to your post,
this way it will be a lot easier to find a solution. Thank you!

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Sorry, I meant to add that info.

I'm located in the Central United States and I tried some things since my original post. Cleaned up the PC files, history, etc. A registry check, ran a defrag, made sure Chromes extensions were the same (which is none), and still no luck.

The Shoutbox time is 21:36

I tried to play some of the older tracks to see if that might make a difference. I went all the way back to 44000, then 22000, and finally 10000. Unfortunately the lag is still there.

Well after fighting this all day I found out Chrome uses it's own flash-player (pepper box) in it's automatic upgrades, which loaded itself on my machine. If you still have Shock-wave's plugin use it and disable the pepper-box plugin. I read there are issues with it especially on web games etc. It must not work well here either?

I tried IE and it worked fine. I opted to use Firefox and things are loading instantly. I prefer Chrome, but until Chrome fixes the bug I will simply use FF.

Hopefully this helps others that may have had similar problems. The Shoutbox says 23:39

I have the issue on Saturday and Sunday's
About midday shoutbox time.
I'm in Western Australia.
I'll come and fill this in the next time it happens and be more specific.
It happens on both my wifi and mobile phone data connection.

April 04 2016 14:08:38
Western Australia
Stream stalling
iPhone browser
Wifi connection

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Edited by Jeebsie on April 04 2016 14:13

Thank you for providing this kind of feedback - I can monitor a lot of things on the server, but never tell how the behavious actually is on the user side on the other end of the planet :)
@Psycho - I'm glad you could find a solution and will find out if there is a player update available that will fix the Chrome compatibilit issue you pointed out.

@Jeebsie - australia is pretty much the maximum possible distance to the wikiloops server which is located in Berlin, Germany.
Each piece of data is being passed on thru a chain of not less than 30 server knots untill it hits your end, so to be honest I'm not all surprised to learn you are experiencing drop outs in the stream.
The only way to avoid that would be to rent a local server down under, which then would need to be kept in sync with the central server. I'd love to do that one fine day, it is a budget issue in the end. I'll be hunting for sponsors this week, whish me luck :)

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I am not an expert, so I might talk bulls here. But I am using Chrome, and I noticed that soem websites (not WIKILOOPS in particular but also here sometimes) had longer loading times, and scrolling was slower, it was quite frustrating. I then went into the settings of Chrome and pressed "reset everything" - and BINGO, it was running smooth again. I must have had some settings wrong, or maybe an extension? Might try to do that, who knows...

Thanks a lot for the reply Dick:)

To be honest it hasn't bothered me or affected my experience with the site, there are just too many positives to worry about it.
Plus, there is always the download button.

Good luck with the sponser👍

Even Firefox is having it's issues. The tracks are hanging up today. I switched over to IE and it works great. TG, I tried a reset on Chrome and it didn't change. I wonder if you have a different version, or it might just be because you are close and I'm 30 servers away?
Which browser are you using Jeebs... it appears you are having better luck and are farther away than I am.
It seems like I'll be using IE for now.
I deeply appreciate all your help Dick. I've read that Chrome's latest version is causing this due to their own flash player (pepperbox). I tried to add the old Shockwave player back to the new version and I didn't have any luck. I'm so stubborn that I will keep trying until I find an answer :)

I have Chrome Version 49.0.2623.110 , says it is the latest available...

TG, does it have the pepper-box player enabled?

Sometimes I have the same prob. The Server is hanging and the title I wish to play stops, okay, stops, play,...... and so on..... It's not nice!
And I'm sitting maybe at the server, 500m from Berlin. Using Safari, newest version.
Mostly it is at the evening, maybe At 9:30 pm or so and at the weekend.
But not ever. Sometimes it runs without any probs. Greetings from Teltow.

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Edited by frankyguitar on April 05 2016 05:33

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I don't really have many performance problems although the site does 'hiccup' every so often. The main issue I see is that sometimes, especially on mobile, if I click 'expand' on a track, the page greys out and stops responding. An F5 usually sorts it out. I think the javascript hangs and it also often happens clicking on the link to the track number having expanded the track in my profile feed.

I'm usually on Opera on either Windows or Mac. I mostly use Opera Coast on my iPhone. It might be an Opera grumble!

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Edited by mpointon on April 05 2016 11:15

And if it's any help, can I offer a top tip I've found when uploading tracks. Sorry if it's telling anyone to suck eggs! I think the upload stuff can be a bit funny but I do the following and always get a successful upload:

- Go to upload page
- Drag 'n drop/browse your MP3
- Wait until the upload completes, goes through the waveform generation and confirms it's ready (you often see some script errors just before the confirm message)
- Upload your HD if you're going to. Again, wait until it confirms it is complete.
- Type your comments/set template information etc.
- Submit!
- Go cry in the corner (optional)

The important thing, it seems to me, is to wait for the upload and the processing to complete before trying to do anything else, even typing comments.

This works every time for me without fail. I know it takes longer and kind of defeats the point of the asynchronous processing but I've rarely had problems with uploads/template when doing it sequentially.

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Edited by mpointon on April 05 2016 11:23

No I have flash player. Install the flashplayer and disable pepperbox or whatever, see the attached image. Type chrome://plugins/ and disable whatever you don't want.

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TeeGee attached the following image:

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Edited by TeeGee on April 05 2016 17:15

Hey Folks, me again with some quick responses:

First of all - since quite some time wikiloops does not use flash in modern browsers, the audio player uses the so called html5-audio-tag, a browser native player that does not require any plugins. Older Browsers (IE 8 and lower) do use a flash fallback option, but that should not be the case in a chrome install newer than 2012.

Secondly - the list of potential reasons for experiencing slow responding internet is a long one.
It might be your browser hanging up on some javascript function as martin experiences (I'll try to check that), but that is a totally local thing on your device.
It might be your mom watching her soap in full HD on your in-house network.
It might be the time of the day when anyone in your city is online and the local network gets slowed down.
It might be some transatlantic server knot having issues leading to all intercontinental traffic being re-routed.
Oh, and it may be that the wikiloops server on the other end of the connection chain is having trouble serving all the visitors, too.

It is nearly impossible to tell which one of those reasons is the case without dedicated testing, and some of these causes will come together and leave unnoticed.
It is difficult.
As long as the wikiloops pages are loaded halfways quickly, that sounds as if the server was responding - and it would not serve pages any longer if it was all overloaded, issuing "server not responding - network timed out" errors in your browser.

Wether a stream is playing uninterrupted is also depending on the mp3-encoding quality. When we had the 128k per sec encoding rate limit (2011-2012), tracks didnt sound good but played right on thru, simply because there is less data to transfer than with a 320k mp3 - and since the choice of encoding rate is yours when uploading, you will experience some tracks blocking and some tracks streaming nicely.
That makes it really hard to judge what is actually going on.

One very vague hint I would like to give is this: If you experience problems, could it be that you have several tabs of wikiloops open in your browser, or your constantly refreshing facebook newsfeed, or any other type of interactive sites clogging up your network?
I do use a lot of tabs, and from some point on, having thirty tabs of wikiloops open with reloading shoutbox and notification icons will cause trouble :)

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Thanks Dick, that is good info, and will help to narrow things down.

A weak link in the transatlantic network, as you mentioned makes sense. All browsers I've tried are having issues now, some are worse than others. In the meantime I will double check everything on my end. My next step is to have my provider upgrade my router because it is out of date. Maybe even spend a little more for their highest speed capability. I am one level below what they offer now.

As mentioned, up and downloads seem to be ok. Maybe a little slower during the evening hours shoutbox time, but not bad. Also all other functions of the site seem to work just fine. Streaming is the main issue, and one that I never had a problem with until lately. It didn't happen slowly, but instead it happened suddenly.

I will keep trying... if I'm lucky I have overlooked something very simple.

Thanks everyone for all your input :)

Well after three days of trying, thinking I had it a couple times, I have found: I am not having problems with any other overseas websites streaming, so something is simply not allowing me to stream music efficiently from this particular site. Very strange indeed when it was just fine a few days ago.

It's disheartening to wait 5 minutes, and then have the stream constantly breaking up. It's just not practical to try and use the site that way. I guess you could say this is a rant, but only because I'm a bit upset about it all. Sorry I'm coming off this way.

I hate to say this, but I can't continue to work on a fix I can't fix. And it really is a bummer to leave. I really like this place and the people here. I refuse to upload anything when I can't hear others music. That just wouldn't be right, and counterproductive.

I'll continue to try each day for awhile. Wikiloops is too cool not too.

i am really sad to read that you're having such a bad experience on wikiloops up to the point you're considering to leave ! :/
hope you'll find a way to fix ! (try that isp upgrade ?)

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