Something is crippling the OLO site, Graham.

I use Firefox as my browser, and Ubuntu Linux is my operating system. I have just changed ISPs from bigpond (notionally 256/64) to Internode (notionally 1500/256) and have been getting dramatically improved speed of OLO page loading.

But not this morning.

The status bar at the bottom of my screen has been telling me that, variously, either the transfer of data from www.google-analytics.com , or au.effectivemeasure.net is hanging OLO out to dry. I have been waiting MINUTES at a time for a page to load.

In posting the 19th post to the topic 'Blind fury or emotional blackmail' I experienced these minutes-long delays in loading in first refreshing the index page, then bringing up the default topic page, then bringing up the 'new post' page, and finally bringing up the 'preview' within the 'new post' page.

I did not experience anything like these sort of delays even on my previous slower bigpond ADSL service.

My impression is that either the servers at these two sites are letting OLO down, or there is insufficient bandwidth in the connections thereto from OLO. Other sites like Twitter or Gmail are loading in a flash.

Just wondering whether other OLO users are having similar experiences.

BTW, in the process of changing to an improved service, I have saved myself $10 per month for a broadly comparable 10Gb limit before encountering throttling or 'shaping'. A major consideration in making the change was that Internode officially supports Linux, whereas when I last heard from them, bigpond did not.

Forrest

"I experienced these minutes-long delays in loading in first refreshing the index page, then bringing up the default topic page, then bringing up the 'new post' page, and finally bringing up the 'preview' within the 'new post' page."

Yes, I had the same problem this morning. Don't know if it was quite a minute but it was very much slower than usual. Seems okay again now though.

Don't know if it's related or not, but yesterday morning I couldn't get onto OLO at all. Kept getting the Server Error message. Gave up and tried again later and it was okay.

Bronwyn,

Thank you for your response on this issue. As you may be aware, I am particularly sensitive to any issues that have the appearance of threatening the workability of sites like OLO. The traditional proprietorial/editorial control that was once the monopoly of the MSM has been largely overthrown by blogs and fora on the internet. Attempts at censorship can come from many directions.

In discussion with nerd geek son over yesterday's apparent OLO problem, the prospect of a denial of service (DOS) attack upon OLO was raised. Apparently such attacks, in which the servers of particular sites are flooded with requests from many computers at once, can be mounted with the aid of 'back door' viral programs that can effectively 'zombify' many home and small office computers such that those computers all place requests upon the target site without the real owners even being aware their machines are being hijacked to this end. OLO could easily qualify as the target for such attacks, which might mean that its own servers might be targetted, or, alternatively, the servers of sites upon which the OLO site is known to depend (such as www.google-analytics.com or au.effectivemeasure.net) may be attacked.

The fact must be faced that our own government has an expressed interest in being able to censor the internet. Its stated interest is in being able to remove "unwanted content". This is not necessarily the pornographic and paedophile sites that it would have the public believe are the targets of its intended censorship, but could well be sites like OLO that are capable of giving expression to public opinion, and enabling discussion upon subjects THE PUBLIC want discussed. Our own government, or interests outside it that support it, could see DOS attacks as a way to achieving suppression of 'unwanted content'.

As the day progressed, it seemed more and more sites, with which OLO interacts when serving its pages, were the points at which the loading of pages was hanging, rather than the two mentioned in my post.

The problem resolved itself late in the afternoon.

Forrest:...and all:

It appears that we have one or three situations currently affecting the OLO site:
1) The site is being hacked from outside by an "interested" person or organization.

2) We are concidentally having the same access problems at the same time, but not all are affected, which suggests the selective targetting of certain individuals via their Internet connections.

3) The Forum/OLO is itself suffering technical problems or alternatively has been compromised by outside "interests"

I am on a Dial-up connection which 12 months ago operated at the staggering speed of 32.4kbs, it gradually deteriorated, (probably due to increasing line congestion) to 28.4kbs and I am now permanently on 26.4kbs....I was at the beginning suffering very irregular "line drop-outs" which at the end of the day was costing me small fortune in reconnection calls ...the line drop-out rate seems to have amazingly ceased, however a better Broadband system is not available via the phone network, due to the poor local exchange qualities....I am now currently considering alternative methods of access!....I have "the" Fibre-Optic cable running past the front door, which has been there for around 17 odd years, but nobody seems to know exactly what it is for or exactly who owns it,....very democratic!

If the OLO site has in fact been compromised, I would suggest that it is a sad day for our so-called Democracy when and if our few remaining opportunities to voice our opinions openly have been removed under the guise of "censorship"!

We are approaching a very "exciting" time in our political history, as the ongoing "refugee/asylum seekers" issue hots up, so we need "clean" access to voice our own individual opinions on the subject, which itself is going to have far-reaching effects upon the whole population in the coming months and possibly years!

2 de..[4 th]
try to post the topic
ERROR MESSAGE;

ONE POST ONE COMMENT...lol its a joke.5 articles /5 posts..now go away

5 articles [new] posted per day
5 article posts per day[limit]

5 responses[then go blog some other place

how to respond to other responses [to yesterdays 5 new topics]
are we willfull kids who are to be limited because we already ate our 5 posts for today?

dont eat all your todays posting lollies jeffry...lol

should we limit comment on new topic or limit responmse to old topics?
5 per day...lol
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/index-articles.asp

lets get rid of posting articles and
just post links from general section

yeah im having the constant error thing as well
cutting and saving is vital

am frustrated by the delay [and waiting to download the dumb first page to click the all button[but i figure the income comes from the adds, and every click the add revenue bill/credit adds up

we all should be clicking a lot of pages..[that way we dont need a new athiest sponcer], who just might take over the site with their fellow athiests swamping the ever fewer poster's trying to defend our various faiths

another issue is SOMETIMES my words erase as i correct the missspelled posts[i thus abandon my edit to correct spelling]..ok it looks sloppy but its clear when it happens, because there is more error than normal

anyhow i have commenmted all i can on the few current topics[so go to blog elsewhere [for 9 hours lol. there are some[many unable to respond to posts[in the articles section,. but im sort of fed up with a computer telling me i cant post[so much for the 50 clicks per day my clicks add to the click total, thats lost income gray

that 5 post limit is stealing cash from your pocket, as we go and click elsewhere