Hi again,

I see some light at the end of the tunnel. The data Center appears to be back up to speed now and we've had no network problems today (so far).

Also, Eric has ingeniously split the Trannyweb community site between our two servers, so now one server does the PERL and CGI processing while the other serves up all the images.

This should mean that things run noticeably faster than before.

Have you noticed a difference in speed?

Hugs,

Katie x

Hello girls,

You may have noticed that there has been quite a bit of disruption to Trannyweb services over the last few days.

The reasons are as follows:

* There is a problem with the server which causes it to crash at the same time every day (approx 1030 server time / UTT). It normally then take about ten minutes to get a reboot.

* As our server is located in Fort Lauderdale, FL, reboots have taken much longer over the last couple of weeks. Because of Hurricane Charlie and Hurricane Frances, the data center staff were evacuated leaving just one person in the building to administer around 10000 servers!

* Over the last couple of days, the Data Center in FT Lauderdale has been experiencing "various router and network issues", which have nothing to do with Trannyweb. These "issues" cause Trannyweb to appear offline, even when the server is behaving itself and working perfectly!

* In an effort to prevent things like this happening in the future and in order to make the site much faster, Katie has just pulled over US$1000 out of her own pocket to buy a second server.

It will work in tandem with our existing server (which is straining to keep up with demand) and will double the amount of memory we have at our disposal. We will also have two fast processors doing the work instead of one!

* However, while the second server is installed there may be some disruption as programmers do their reboots (as programmers do).

* Eric the programmer is installing a new chat room (DigiChat). The installation work may also cause some outages from time to time.

* Eric is also installing a new navigation system. Trannyweb has become so huge and unwieldy over the last couple of year that even Katie sometimes has trouble finding her way around. We hope our new drop-down menus will help. However, while the work takes place, there may again be some disruption.

When all this work is finished, we hope to have one of the largest, fastest, most easily navigable tranny communities on the planet!

Please bear with us for a while, as everything is sorted out and accept my apologies for the disruption.

Hugs,

Katie x

yes katie i had noticed things haven`t been quite right recently,but now you`ve explained what the problem was it`s all perfectly clear now.i see you`ve spent $1000 on a new server for TW..thankyou so much kaite,maybe that will speed things up a bit.There must be something that all us girls can to to help you,so that you`re not out of pocket over this.Once all the works done,we`ll then have the BEST tranny site anywhere on the web and it`ll all be thanks to yours(and erics hard work).We are so lucky to have you running TW katie,you really are one in a million.Love and xxxxxxxx maria

Ok Katie so I was wrong perhaps you shouldn't go on holiday. I did wonder when I saw Carlie and Frances if the server would have problems as I knew it was situated in Florida. Ah well things can only get better - can't they. Keep on doing your best Katie.

Well done, Katie. I noticed the outages – or at least, I had problems logging on, and thought you might be short of bandwidth. Keep at it. One day we'll have the most complete tranny site on the planet!

Catherine

Hi Katie,

I figured the outages where due to Charlie, Francis and maybe Ivan? Hopefully Ivan is a good little hurricane and stays away from our servers .

Huggz...

Casandra

hi ya katie

i had noticed the problems and thought they was to do with server probs , didnt realiese it was in america , any thing us girls can do to help so your not of pocket just shout and well do wot we can , Keep up the good work and thank you for a fabulaus site

Thanks for your support Christina. I don't think it's fair though, that the same people should always make donations when things go wrong.

I've paid for the new server and all the programming changes that will go with it. If anyone wants to make a donation towards the cost I won't stop them. The address is:

http://gendersociety.com/[...]s.shtml

However, I don't like begging for money to keep our monster alive.

I'd prefer it if people who want to help, bought things from the TrannyStuff shop, like our new gold pendant or the like. That way you get something back and the profit still goes back into feeding the Trannyweb monster.

http://www.trannystuff.com

Hugs,

Katie x

Sorry girls - we had a really bad day yesterday. Access to the server was up and down all day. However, it was not our fault this time.

It was a major network problem at the data center in Florida. Although they said they had the problem licked by about lunchtime, our access continued to be patchy well into the evening.

Things seem to have settled down now but I'm keeping an eye on it, just in case.

Apologies to anyone who was affected.

Hugs,

Katie x

Ha! LOL! The problems a few days back are not a good yardstick to measure our speed by because that was (hopefully) a one-off.

There does seem to be a noticeable increase in speed (to me anyway), but it's not as much as I'd hoped for. I thought that having two servers on the case, twice as much memory and two processors would make the thing really fly.

So far I'm a bit disappointed.

Hugs,

Katie x

Hi All,

I had the same problem describing why my customer Maersk didn't see much overall improvement when I added a second machine to their site. The problem is processors can only run at n speed. If they are keeping up with the work load then adding a second machine still only runs at n speed. But, where 2 machines help is if the work load doubles, then when you reach maximum load then it is helpful to have multiple machines. That is when you see improvements to the whole system.

Hope this helps, it is a very difficult concept to explain.

Huggz....

Casandra

Hi Girls,

I believe what Casandra was saying is related to, in part, to bandwidth.
If you imagine bandwidth as a garden hose, you can only get so much water through it. But a wider house can pump more water thought it, water in this case being internet traffic. Now imagine at the end of the hose is a nosel. If the nosel is smaller than the hose then the flow is slowed, if bigger the flow is the maximum the hose will allow. The nosel being the server, TW for example.
Did that bore anybody as much as me thats that thery anyway.

Anyway Katie, I hope the situation gets resolved soon and I'm looking forward to seeing the new TW features

Hugs

Katie