Forum not loading problem back.

Javascript isn't related to the Java plug in from Oracle. It's handled entirely by the browser. Of course nearly all modern browsers now compile javascript on the fly with their own compiler.

Random data:

I have this problem at home almost constantly on two separate machines (W7 & Vista), but have yet to have it from work (W7).

I tried updating my Java last night after someone notified me of this thread, but it did not appear to help.

I haven't actually tried to fix the problem before last night though, I just assumed the boards were screwed up at night or something... I'll try some troubleshooting tonight.

For the last couple of days the forum has been working faster than it has in the last couple of weeks. Have not been logged out for over a month.
I have WinXP and IE8.

Probably sheer coincidence but I've been noticing something. I almost never visit the front page of the forums but instead go directly to the English section.

Lately though I've been going to the main section so I can check the current population. When current users is 4k or below I seem to connect quickly. When it's in the 4500 to 5k zone it still loads but is very laggy. When the number of users is around 5500 or so it can take a couple minutes for the forums to load and when it's around 6k I can't get in at all.

Now you may be asking how I know what the population is if I can't get in. Well the browser on my Evo connects easily no matter what the situation.

I'm not guaranteeing that it has anything to do with population but it's something I've noticed since I decided to start monitoring it. So I'll keep checking and keep updating. And it's something the rest of you might take a look at when you are having fast or slow response times.

Of course now that I've posted this I'm sure I'll notice an opposite trend.

Been having this problem too! Thanks for posting this thread Zombie Man. Glad to know it's not just me.

All of my machines at home do not work (unless I run through one of those free proxy websites), yet all the machines I test at work *do* work.

I would guess a routing issue, but the other symptoms I've heard make me think it's a forum software issue. Bizarre. Anyone got in touch with customer service about this yet?

Looking at settings for the various forum elements coming down in Fiddler, it seems there are lots of opportunities for tuning of the CoH webservers.

Static content like images has no explicit cache setting. On Firefox viewed through fiddler, this means I always re-download the content, whether or not it has changed. This includes all the image files, plus things like CSS and javascripts. These could be given much more aggressive cache settings. At work, we set this sort of content to have a 24-hour max age. That way users never need to re-download content that almost never changes mid-day more than once a day.

According to Fiddler, about 60% of most forum pages' download time is spent downloading images, and that's after I filtered out peoples' avatars. Implementing max-age headers on images alone would probably represent a significant load decrease for the web servers, and would probably dramatically improve client page load times, outside the current issue. (Image file background.jpg is nearly 400k in size. Downloading that for every page hit is hugely extravagant.)

The files I seem to hang up on retrieving most often are the largest files. Those are: the forum page itself, yahoo-dom-event.js, vbulletin_textedit.js, vbulletin_global.js, and vbulletin_lightbox.js. Four out of five of those are static content - they should not change unless the forums upgrade to a new version of vBulletin, or at least patch it. Setting caching on those would also potentially provide a significant performance improvement.

If it helps, I've found that if I click on a link and it hangs I can always hit stop then refresh and that almost always works. I just have to do it pretty much every time...

Today I've got the forums, no issues.

I've been back and forth with support, who have been giving me all the standard BS... Try it without your router... Restart your computer... Clear your cache... One idiot even told me to go to the NCSoft site. Didn't even read the email, apparently.

They're refusing to even consider that it might be on their end.

I created a thread before someone linked to this one. I am having the same problem, and it's been going on for weeks.

As I suspected, it doesn't look like things like Greasemonkey can do anything with this. They only kick in once the page is already downloaded. However, I did find something promising for FireFox users here: BetterCache. Looking at the details on the developers page, it looks like it might let us force longer caching. I intend to play with it tonight or this weekend, and if I can get it to cache the js files here, it will help some.

I want to stress that even if this works, it won't make the problem go away completely. It will just make it seem to happen less often. About 1/2 the page load hangups I see are because the server has sent me the forum page, but not sent an in-line javascript include. The browser is waiting for the JS file to download because without it, the page may not render correctly. If that JS file is in the cache (and considered still valid), the browser doesn't have to download it. However, the forums don't always send the actual "outer" forum page, either, and those should not be cached. When it won't send the forum page, there's not much we can do but hit refresh.

Edit: Just in case some of you want to go play with this (and indeed that's why I bothered to link it here), I do want to relay something from the plug-in's home page.

IMPORTANT NOTE: This extension is intended for advanced/professional users only: It needs to be configured properly - otherwise you will experience browsing problems. At least you should know what mime types are and you should be able to use them adequately. Bettercache modifies HTTP-headers! Please do not use it, if you are unsure how to handle this stuff. Some hints on configuration are provided, but there is NO tutorial.

Yup, having the same problem from the UK. Sometimes the pages will load instantly as they always did but most of the time I'm left hammering the link and refreshing until the page deigns to load.

Very frustrating and the only site I have any problem with.