Author Topic: Best way to follow during busy launch period? (Read 8439 times)

MP99 · « **on:** 09/14/2013 09:16 am »

Quote from: Chris Bergin on 08/29/2013 03:04 am

PLEASE NOTE THAT WE FULLY EXPECT THE SITE TO BE VERY BUSY ON LAUNCH DAY. WE WILL LIKELY RESTRICT IT TO FORUM MEMBERS ONLY - WITH NO ACCESS TO THE FORUM FOR GUESTS - WHEN THE SITE BECOMES TOO BUSY. READ THIS: http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=31697.0)

OK, so here's a question...

I'm really getting into the Tapatalk app for NSF - works very smoothly - a great success.

It also seems to me that it might be putting less load on the servers than serving to webpages - seems to be much more targeted at just the text with less avatars, post counts, sig-lines, etc, etc.

So, if I connect via Tapatalk for the busy time, is that helping reduce server load (or is it perhaps a surprisingly heavy process on the server itself)? If I'm logged in, am I going to keep the connection when access is prioritised? Is it possible that Tapatalk will be any less reliable than web?

cheers, Martin

Chris Bergin · « **Reply #1 on:** 09/14/2013 11:00 am »

Have you used L2 on Tapatalk, because if you have, the system must be seeing you as logged in and thus if we culled the guests during a launch event, you should be ok?

We could test it during a quiet time for a few second if it comes to it.

I might install this myself on my cheap Windows 7 phone

MP99 · « **Reply #2 on:** 09/14/2013 12:12 pm »

Chris,

yes, I've both read L2 and posted from Tapatalk. The forum definitely sees me as logged in from Tt. (And you *really* need to try Tt on your phone.

But, as a programmer looking in from the outside, let me tell you there's a whole bunch of assumptions in what you wrote that are probably, but not definitely, true. (It's quite possible that the devs have explained how Tt integrates with SMF that would confirm those assumptions, but that's why I'm asking.)

You obviously had a dev forum during development - do you still have a separate little dev environment we could test this in?

(And still interested whether Tapatalk is a resource-hog that will cause your servers to collapse much earlier than they would under web-only loads. If you haven't done stress-tests before now, you have your first one coming up under fire! Also, it occurs to me that the web pages on the old forum could take a while to come up on mobile devices. Tapatalk may load the pages quicker and allow people to refresh more frequently.)

cheers, Martin

If I was just a couple of months further on with my re-training from mainframe to PC develpment, I'd have loved to get involved in the site rebuild. Thought long and hard about it, but eventually realised I would probably just have broken it.

david1971 · « **Reply #3 on:** 09/14/2013 02:03 pm »

Reading just the title of the topic, the words "one massive party thread" popped into mind...

MP99 · « **Reply #4 on:** 09/14/2013 07:27 pm »

Quote from: david1971 on 09/14/2013 02:03 pm

Reading just the title of the topic, the words "one massive party thread" popped into mind...

Yup. I just want to make sure as many people can get into the party on the day.

cheers, Martin

d3jf · « **Reply #5 on:** 09/14/2013 09:51 pm »

There's definitely less data being transferred from the server to your device when using Tapatalk. That should reduce the bandwidth requirements. Very little images, no HTML or other resources, like Javascript or CSS.

Tapatalk extends the forum with a XML-RPC API, which, I think, then calls the SMF API to retrieve data. That would mean more computing power needed to serve a request. Another possibility that comes to mind is that Tapatalk interacts directly with the SMF database, which would have very little effect on the server's performance, depending on the effectiveness of Tt code.

MP99 · « **Reply #6 on:** 09/20/2013 06:19 am »

Quote from: d3jf on 09/14/2013 09:51 pm

There's definitely less data being transferred from the server to your device when using Tapatalk. That should reduce the bandwidth requirements. Very little images, no HTML or other resources, like Javascript or CSS.

Question is, whether bandwidth is the constraint when the system gets over-busy. I'd suspect not?

Quote

Tapatalk extends the forum with a XML-RPC API, which, I think, then calls the SMF API to retrieve data. That would mean more computing power needed to serve a request. Another possibility that comes to mind is that Tapatalk interacts directly with the SMF database, which would have very little effect on the server's performance, depending on the effectiveness of Tt code.

Assuming the servers are CPU or I/O constrained, then that could be a concern.

I do have one big concern which doesn't necessarily apply so much to a live thread.

If you browse a thread with attached images via web you see thumbnails, then can click through to download fullsize versions.

It looks like Tt displays thumbnails, but also DOWNLOADS ALL THE FULL-SIZED IMAGES ON THAT PAGE. That means you can click-through quickly, but you download huge amounts of data if you go to an image-dump page. Then re-download it again every time you refresh.

"Live" threads are more likely to have smaller screen-caps, so that's not so much an issue in that particular case at the very busy times. But it will only take someone to attach a couple of hires images to massively spike server bandwidth.

Cheers, Martin