New Board Software, New Server

[C00Lzero]

no, i haven't found any clue about your problem here.
even when i set my connection to edge-speed it still loads all images.

in fact you probably shouldn't see that much "slowliness" of our servers, since we introduced ssl, if you allow your browser to cache the files.
but yes, if there are a lot of pictures in the thread, it could take a bit longer, since you now don't request from 20 different image-hosters.

i'm also want to add some kind of cdn for our pictures (at least the proxified ones). But~ i can't find anything that we are able to pay.
if you go to the big players akiba need to pay around 1500$ for the traffic we produce. (if we use s.th. like ovh, it's still around 700$)

if we go for cloudflare, some people will be forced to solve a lot of captchas - but i'm really thinking about adding this one and don't give a shit about the few people using proxies, since probalby 80% of the people are using their home-connection. (then again cloudflare has some problems with e.g. Deutsche Telekom, since they won't peer with them)
i also would like to have some pops in asia, since a lot of people are users are from the APAC-region - but then again they are very picky about DMCA and/or adult-content etc. so i need some provider which will ignore such problems on their site.

so probably the best solution atm would be to setup our own geographical cdn with multiple (virtual) servers on each location

 

[Ceewan]

if we go for cloudflare, some people will be forced to solve a lot of captchas - but i'm really thinking about adding this one and don't give a shit about the few people using proxies, since probalby 80% of the people are using their home-connection.

Wow, that is harsh bro (especially since I am one of those). Quite a few of those 20% are members and most of those 80% are visitors that don't contribute to the forum but make up the majority of the traffic. But you do what you got to do, I will still have love for ya. Cloudfare will likely block VPN users from Korea and China as well, since this site is on their blocklist (I am sure pretty about Korea, not sure about all of China). Though I can't fault your logic, it is likely still a vast minority that surf here by proxy. I don't think I have ever tried to answer the captcha for Clouflare, can't fucking read that damn thing anyway. It is also worth of note that Cloudflare has been attracting a lot of attention lately, since one of their clients is TPB ( The Grooveshark incident as well, if you haven't heard).


Well, whatever you do, I haven't had any problem with speed here or accessing this site. Though it does take longer at times to upload images than other times, that is really no big deal and it could be on my end for all I know.

 

[CodeGeek]

I also think that this is a little bit over the top.

Okay, I debugged the HTTP traffic using Fiddler2. When my Mozilla Firefox v39.0 requests a thread page it uses a normal "GET", but with a "If-Modified-Since" header.
Request (excerpt)

If-Modified-Since: Fri, 31 Jul 2015 17:14:31 GMT

The AO server responds with the complete site and some interesting cache-related headers.
Response (excerpt)

Date: Fri, 31 Jul 2015 17:10:18 GMT
Expires: Thu, 19 Nov 1981 08:52:00 GMT
Cache-control: private, max-age=0
Last-Modified: Fri, 31 Jul 2015 17:15:54 GMT

Depending on this response the browser shouldn't cache the page at all and request it also the next time. Reasonable as pages of a thread can change at any point.

Lets' have a look at a request using the "/proxy.php" (in this case an image): The request doesn't contain any special header fields. But the response does.
Response (excerpt)

Date: Fri, 31 Jul 2015 17:18:45 GMT
Etag: "1438075609"
Expires: Thu, 31 Dec 2037 23:55:55 GMT
Cache-Control: max-age=315360000

The next time the browser requests the thread page also the image is requested again. And it has exactly the same hash in the query parameters and also the same header fields. Of course the server (means the proxy.php) sends the same image again.
All the other resources which are obtained "directly" from AO (like CSS, AO images and so on) are not requested at the 2nd time I open the thread page.

Means: There is no caching at all for resources which are obtained by the proxy.php while all other resources delivered by AO are cached by the browser.
I'm not sure what the caching triggers in Firefox. But maybe it simply is unable to handle the query as it is just a query and doesn't refer a resource.

https://www.akiba-online.com/proxy.php?image=[URL]&hash=[HASH]

Maybe it has to be changed into something like:

https://www.akiba-online.com/proxy.php/image/ID/[ID]/hash/[HASH]

The ID has to be some string or number - as long as it doesn't contain slashes. This ID refers to the original resource indirectly. Or it's the URL, but e.g. Base64 encoded. And the hash can be a hexadecimal number like it is now. I'm not 100% sure, but that would maybe do the trick.

 

[C00Lzero]

i've tweaked a bit our systems (and xenforo)

according to webpagetest a second request will load all files (also the proxied images) from cache.

i'm also thinking about setting up my own CDN-Service
this could get us the posibility to host the attachments, pictures etc. closer at you and wouldn't break tor-users.

though i still need some pops i can afford ^^'

 

[CodeGeek]

i've tweaked a bit our systems (and xenforo)

according to webpagetest a second request will load all files (also the proxied images) from cache.

i'm also thinking about setting up my own CDN-Service
this could get us the posibility to host the attachments, pictures etc. closer at you and wouldn't break tor-users.

though i still need some pops i can afford ^^'

I don't know what you did, but Firefox - now version 39.0.3 - caches the files it gets through the proxy.php (tested it with Fiddler2 again). Also I'm not sure what you wanna say with that "Web Page Test" as it only does some general tests, but doesn't evaluate how the browser implementations would handle the content. Or I'm wrong?

if my browser doesn't load the images over and over again I don't have any problems. So servers closer to me are not necessary - at least for me as it already works fast.

Anyway thanks for fixing the problem.

 

[CodeGeek]

Okay, another problem: Now the smiles are not loaded anymore. Even if I go to the Smilies help page I only get the onion guys but not the smilies at the beginning.
If I look at the HTML code of my last post using Firebug I see the following:

<img class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie1" title="Smile :)" alt=":)" src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png">

Seems like it references the wrong image file.

 

[Ceewan]

yep, missing the first twelve.

 

[C00Lzero]

fixed

this is due to the fact, that the path to the css is changed.

if you find any other things that don't look right, please report it to me.

edit
the web-page-test really does emulate the browser engines.

 

[CodeGeek]

fixed
[...]

I confirm that the smileys are working again.

[...]
edit
the web-page-test really does emulate the browser engines.

Really? I thought I didn't because any browsers where mentioned in that report. I would have expected something like "Firefox v39 would react like this and this and this, Chrome vXYZ would react like this and this and this" and so on for all the other browsers (like IE, Edge, Safari, Opera, ...).
Anyway it's working now. And that's the most important point for me.

 

[C00Lzero]

you have to specify which browser-enginge you want to use, before starting the test

edit
also fixed the missing icon in the editor

 

[CodeGeek]

The chances in aspect of caching have been active now for 5 days. And I have to say I'm impressed. For my mobile Internet I have a contract with a volume limit. And since then I use much less of that then I did before thanks to the caching. Great work!

 

[Solingen]

Due to some very strange behaviour of the russian government,
russian ips are now blocked on our russian server.
if you sometimes experience 403-errors, please use another ip, proxy or tor-exit-node.

atm only russian ips are blocked out accessing akiba

Why? Couldn't get my fix of parmesan cheese for a while and now this. You can't do that to me.
Btw I haven't experienced any connection problems up until the past few days.

 

[C00Lzero]

it was only on the russian server - which is now offline due to some not tollerable actions of the Provider.

access to the netherland-servers are open to any ip requesting akiba

 

[C00Lzero]

and we were offline.
sorry for that. my monitoring wasn't accurate enough to monitor this error and email me (and i was away on the weekend with nearly no internet)
So we were offline from Saturday, 15.11.2015 05:00 CET until now.
i'm sorry :/

if s.th. like this happens and takes longer than a few minutey, please write me an e-mail: c00lzero@akiba-online.com
(with zeros, not Os)

For the poeple on IRC: please trigger me, asap i'm online.
(i was online yesterday evening CET for around 1,5h)

 

[Ceewan]

and we were offline.
sorry for that.

Glad you/we are back. I was a bit worried. Even saw the 502 error here being talked about at 2ch......in Japanese. Tell chomps to get a new facebook page or something as backup so all us worried folks can gather around and talk to each other when the site goes down. Came in handy a few years ago for more than a few (more handy if a mod or chomps had been more active on it). That might be more convenient for you than a mass email as well.

 

[ReiOtaku]

For the poeple on IRC: please trigger me, asap i'm online.
(i was online yesterday evening CET for around 1,5h)

Will do, and thanks for your work

 

[Casshern2]

Akiba-online is immortal.

 

[CodeGeek]

and we were offline.
sorry for that. my monitoring wasn't accurate enough to monitor this error and email me (and i was away on the weekend with nearly no internet)
So we were offline from Saturday, 15.11.2015 05:00 CET until now.
i'm sorry :/

if s.th. like this happens and takes longer than a few minutey, please write me an e-mail: c00lzero@akiba-online.com
(with zeros, not Os)

For the poeple on IRC: please trigger me, asap i'm online.
(i was online yesterday evening CET for around 1,5h)

Thanks for the hard work. And I put the address in my address book.

Akiba-online is immortal.

Yeah, but more often offline as other sites. But it's also the site - or forum, to be more precise - with the most visitors (guests & members) which I visit. And we've been offline often because of some requests from outside. So maybe it's not really fair to say that.
Since @C00Lzero set up that system we have now the downtimes have been gone down dramatically. I can remember that before the site was offline for a week a few times while now the maximum is one day. And in most cases it's fixed after a few hours.
Hm, if I think about maybe @C00Lzero should offer that service to the public. Many of these hosters and cloud services have a reaction time which is a lot higher.

 

[C00Lzero]

Glad you/we are back. I was a bit worried. Even saw the 502 error here being talked about at 2ch......in Japanese. Tell chomps to get a new facebook page or something as backup so all us worried folks can gather around and talk to each other when the site goes down. Came in handy a few years ago for more than a few (more handy if a mod or chomps had been more active on it). That might be more convenient for you than a mass email as well.

i personally don't like facebook, but i will look into this. Using it for status-updates should be okay. Or i'm creating some kind of blog or s.th. else. let's see.

well, if we could we could make akiba more redundant, but this will cost money - lot's of money, which we don't really have.

Yeah, but more often offline as other sites. But it's also the site - or forum, to be more precise - with the most visitors (guests & members) which I visit. And we've been offline often because of some requests from outside. So maybe it's not really fair to say that.

i'm trying to fix this. But since the content isn't that legal and we are very huge (within alexa's top 5k webpages of the world: as we "speak" Nr. 4155 globally and 425 in Japan) there are only 3 possibilities:

1. using cheaper systems and delete everything, hoping that they won't shut us down due to our content (we don't want to do this)
2. scoping with the actual setup (which is a balance between anonymity, we-don't-give-a-shit-about-DMCA, stability and money) and only change what is really needed (that's why we are still keeping the 2nd frontend-server which fails around 1week every month)
3. somehow getting much more money, to run a complex, decentrialized, anonymous, fast and stable network.
   (Just for your info: if we would buy a cheap CDN (which i really would like to have) we have to pay approx $500 if we go with the cheapest at the market - do we want to have s.th. that is better, it's around $1k+$2k each month. (if they even would allow our content.)
   Well, there is still the option to set this up on our own, so we need ~2 pops in Asia, 2 or 3 pops in USA, 2 or 3 Pops in europe - each being able to handle a few TB of traffic, which still would probably be around $400 (asian traffic is fucking expensive) plus additional costs for creating a geo-aware dns-system (i think about ~$50 each month)

Since @C00Lzero set up that system we have now the downtimes have been gone down dramatically. I can remember that before the site was offline for a week a few times while now the maximum is one day. And in most cases it's fixed after a few hours.
Hm, if I think about maybe @C00Lzero should offer that service to the public. Many of these hosters and cloud services have a reaction time which is a lot higher.

thanks ^^'
I'm trying to get the online time up even further, see above. Though i'm somehow limited to the money that we are able to get
WoH is a lot smaller, so it's not so expensive. There i had an outage of around 1day the last year, including ~4h of planned maintenance (moving the server to another datacenter and being stuck in the traffic XD) and a few ddos-attacks.
That's what i want to achieve here, too.
I'm not sure if i want to offer this service to the public, since it would probably get slower with getting more customers (and more problems)

you also have to thank @redrooster that he somehow smuggled me in here
also @CoolKevin and @redrooster and all the mods and users who help to keep the site clean.
and don't forget @chompy for starting with this site and paying the server-fees (including the additional bandwidth-costs, since we cross the limit of 10TB each month on each frontend-server)

 

[Ceewan]

i personally don't like facebook, but i will look into this. Using it for status-updates should be okay. Or i'm creating some kind of blog or s.th. else. let's see.

well, if we could we could make akiba more redundant, but this will cost money - lot's of money, which we don't really have.

Just occasional updates and status updates would be nice. The Akiba-Online facebook link:

www.facebook.com/akibanline/


Please note that it still says that ryushare links are required. I am not a big fan of facebook either but if you already have an account you might as well keep your page maintained and up-to-date.