If you are interested in contributing to RootsWeb, you may find more information about it at the address at the bottom of Brian's message. >>>>====++++<<<<&&&&>>>>++++==== ====++++<<<<&&&&>>>>++++====<<<< >X-POP3-Rcpt: [email protected] >Resent-Date: Sun, 4 Jan 1998 21:32:33 -0800 (PST) >To: [email protected], [email protected], > [email protected] >cc: [email protected], [email protected], > "Dr. Brian Leverich" <[email protected]> >Reply-to: "Dr. Brian Leverich" <[email protected]> >Subject: Growing Pains ... >Date: Sun, 04 Jan 1998 20:49:33 -0800 >From: Brian Leverich <[email protected]> >Resent-From: [email protected] >X-Mailing-List: <[email protected]> archive/latest/29 >X-Loop: [email protected] >Precedence: list >Resent-Sender: [email protected] > > > >Maybe it's all those new computers Santa left our genealogical >brethren, but the load on RootsWeb's servers and Internet >connections has increased dramatically in the last week. > >This is causing some problems, but we will fix them as soon as >humanly possible. > >The most obvious problem is that the Web/FTP server is maxing the T1 >pipe it uses, which has forced us to limit the number of FTP >connections we accept during peak hours. Users wishing to access >the USGenWeb Archives should use the Search Engine server, which is >on our second T1 and still has available bandwidth. (I've installed >a pointer to the search engine on the "too many users" FTP message.) > >The second obvious problem is that the lists.rootsweb.com server is >being overloaded, and we're experiencing latencies that are beyond >the 1-10 minute level that we routinely provide. > >The third problem is that we've run out of disk space for use by >Marc Nozell's mailing HTML list archiver and the search engine >server that supports the mail archives and USGenWeb Archives. >(That is, we've filled up more than 17 gigabytes on those servers!) > >Here's what we're doing to bring RootsWeb back to the best possible >performance. > >First, we're acquiring more bandwidth. As a short-term solution, >we've been talking with the sysadmins at three sites with DS3 pipes >(a DS3 is equal to 30 T1s or about 1500 standard 28.8 modems) and we >will probably be colocating the Web server at one of their NOCs very >soon. As a long-term solution, we have Pacific Bell doing the >engineering studies on bringing a DS3 up here to RootsWeb's main NOC. > >Second, we're beefing up our servers. Tomorrow morning we'll be >ordering the memory to double lists.rootsweb.com's size up to 512 >MB, which should solve the mailing list latency problem. We're also >beginning to use RAID-5 disk arrays of the fastest available SCSI >drives in our servers, which should increase the speed of their I/O >subsystems by a factor of 6 to 8. The disk upgrades will give us >plenty of room for expanding support for mailing list archives and >the USGenWeb Archives. > >And we're upgrading virtually all our servers in other ways. > >The upshot is that we expect to be able to continue providing >unlimited, fast, and reliable support for the genealogical >community. There may be a few growing pains because we were >surprised by the size of the sudden after-Christmas growth in >demand, but we'll add capacity as fast as humanly possible. > >As always, I'd like to thank the Members, Sponsors, and Donors who >support RootsWeb. If it weren't for the continuing contributions >being made by our users, there is no chance that we could continue >to grow to meet the expanding needs of the genealogical community. > >Cheers, B. > > >-- >Dr. Brian Leverich Co-moderator, soc.genealogy.methods/GENMTD-L >RootsWeb Genealogical Data Cooperative http://www.rootsweb.com/ >P.O. Box 6798, Frazier Park, CA 93222-6798 [email protected] >