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11 replies

Auctiva site slowness - FIXED!

B bozMember
I know that many people have trouble and have posted about the slowness of the Auctiva site, but I just have to share my insights in the hope of someday resolving this issue. I have been with Auctiva for a little over 8 months with no improvement. Maybe one of you will find the magic bullet, or maybe Auctiva will actually put some heads together and find a solution.

First, the benchmarking: From the time I click the "Create New" listing button to the time I have full control of the browser (smooth scrolling, the ability to type in a text box, no 'jumping') is typically around 45 seconds. From the time I click on a saved listing to the time I regain control is around 45 - 55 seconds. From the time I click "OK" to load a new shipping profile in a saved listing, again 45 to 55 seconds. Same with "Save as New" listing. "Schedule" can take a full minute! So, it takes FOREVER to create, save and schedule a listing, pages are always jumping around and image upload constantly fails. (Doing the same sorts of things to populate my e-commerce site ALWAYS work and take about 1/5th the amount of time.)

USAToday = 5 seconds
Amazon = 5 seconds
Microsoft = 8 seconds
In short, EVERY OTHER SITE on the net runs fine for me.

The equipment: Dual 3.0GHz P4; 4GB 800MHz RAM; 2.5TB H/D space
Verizon DSL - 2.88 Mbps download, .75 Mbps upload

Things I have tried:
1) My DSL speed is now double what it was from a month ago, NO DIFFERENCE
2) running IE8 without add-ons
3) Google Chrome - maybe just a little faster, but nothing significant
4) FireFox - no change
5) completely clear IE history, cache and Java cache
6) turn off windows firewall, disable Norton AV
7) replace DSL modem with one that is 2 years newer
8) eliminate router from system
9) un-install AdAware, Windows Defender, MalwareBytes Anti-Malware
10) the usual H/D defrag, reg clean, reg defrag
11) dedicated swap file on its on drive
12) no swap file, using the 4GB RAM only
13) purge DNS cache
14) re-installed WinXP from scratch
15) tried second XP logon with absolute minimal startup programs

Observations: I have a utility called DUMeter from Hagel Technologies which graphs your upload/downloaded data and gives a numerical readout of your connection speed. (I am in no way affiliated with or recommending the product and there are probably other programs out there that do the same thing.) What is interesting is that I can clearly see the difference between the Auctiva site and any other site that I visit. All other sites typically come in (download) at anywhere from 175 to 275 kB/sec. Anything other than the initial Auctiva login page comes in around 20 to 40 kB/sec, max of 55 kB/sec!! This is the equivalent of dial-up. It's like being on AOL in 1995 with a screaming fast 36.6 modem. It is as if Auctiva is on a very low bandwidth connection to the internet. (Yet I know some of you have no trouble.) What is clear to me is that my computer is just not being 'fed' data anywhere near the speed it is capable of handling. Why??

If you are experiencing this same kind of slowness, you may consider getting a utility to benchmark your download speed as well to see if you have the same 'symptoms'.

I don't know what else to try and I am about at the end of my rope. Someone please help me resolve this issue!
Last edited {1}
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I itsjustmeMember
Boz--very interesting and very concise. A few of us have been balking at the speed issue.

Auctiva is feature rich and I hate making a change or threatening it but from time to time (daily) my frustration peaks.

I believe that an investment in bandwidth, packet size/speed and/or server capacity would keep all of us here and attract new clients.
A auctivatonymAuctiva Product Manager
Hi itsjustme,

Having read this thread, and knowing that you have reported slowness of our site, I took this beyond our support team and asked our IT infrastructure manager who runs our data center and network operations if he would investigate a little further.

He explained that that we monitor our bandwidth usage ongoing, and we are using less than half of the network bandwidth capacity that we have. We simply are not constrained by network bandwidth.

So, the next step is to look at what happens to network traffic flowing back and forth between you and us. He spent some time and found that the data signal goes through the hops...e.g. routers, switches, etc getting from you to us and vice versa. The observed times were all normal at each hop--10 to 20 milliseconds--until he got to your ISP, RoadRunner. Then the times he observed began to almost treble...in the range of 77 to 87 milliseconds.

His conclusion is that your ISP has some issues that are slowing data traffic between you and us. He did a Google search of specific Roadrunner hops and found several references on dslreports.com to slowness on Roadrunner, so this may be a wider problem for them.

He stressed to me that we are not in a position to say that the entire issue lies with your ISP, but we believe a good portion of it is.

There can be issues also with your physical connection to the ISP...for example if you have a local router, firewall, etc that has some setting that is askew, it could slow things down further. It is beyond our ability to determine or troubleshoot that.

So..our bottom line is...we found no evidence of any lack of capacity at our end. We did find solid evidence of a slowdown occurring in your ISP. Other than passing this information along to you, there is not much else we can do, unfortunately.

Sorry I don't have better news, but we do take reports like yours seriously, as we want you to have a good experience using our site.

Boz,

FYI...I don't want you to feel left out...the username you are using on the forum doesn't matchup with any Auctiva id, so unfortunately we couldn't locate you. We had planned to look at your network connection the same as we did for itsjustme.
Last edited by auctivatonym
B bozMember
First, let me apologize for my conspicuous absence from this thread. I believe I had good reason - read on:

My Auctiva issue with extreme slowness is resolved! By sheer coincidence, my wife bought a new laptop with a wireless LAN card in it (the day before my original post). This required me to get a new router with wireless capabilities. The instant I replaced the router, my Auctiva issue completely went away. (For clarification, I am still using the same computer, her new laptop just prompted me to buy a new router.) The initial login page (and these forums) loaded quickly as always, but all of my issues with creating, saving and viewing listings immediately went away. No more 'jumping', pages load/refresh in maybe 5-10 seconds instead of the old 40 seconds to a minute! I can also clearly see the difference visually with my DUMeter app that monitors and displays the upload/download speeds. No more back and forth, back and forth 'handshake' at 30-40 kB/sec like it used to do, now it is just my outgoing request, and then a speedy download of a new page from Auctiva at 150 - 200 or more kB/sec.

Here is what has NOT CHANGED:
1) My ping times to the auctiva server are still generally the same, as they are with all other sites (I have always assumed, and correctly so I think, that this is not an Auctiva bandwidth issue, or everyone would be having trouble)
2) All other sites, which I never had any trouble with, still load and behave exactly as they always did
3) My upload/download speeds, as measured at http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/ are unchanged with the new router

When I stated in my initial post that I had eliminated the router from the system and there was no change, I did eliminate the Netgear router that was at my computer, but probably NOT the LynkSys at the incoming port. (This part of my troubleshooting was done many months ago, so I don't remember it all that well.)

What I do know is that removing the Cisco LinkSys Cable/DSL router and replacing it with a Netgear router fixed my issue. The other Netgear router is still in the system and my computer that is used for Auctiva is still hardwired to the line, not wireless.

The reason I have not posted any further in the thread until now is that I wanted to thoroughly test this and make sure that it was not a fluke. I did go back to the LynkSys and instantly had the same issues. I have been using the Netgear now all of this week, every night on Auctiva and it has run super smooth every time. No more getting up to do an errand, checking e-mail, getting a snack, etc. waiting on Auctiva pages to refresh!!

So it is up to someone smarter than me to explain why a LinkSys router would cause so many issues with ONE, and ONLY ONE website. My hope is that everyone who reads this and is having trouble with Auctiva slowness looks up from their screen right now and sees a LynkSys router - if so, SWITCH IT OUT!
W womandiMember
Wow, Boz. Auctiva should be paying YOU because these are the type things their techies should be looking into. You've got to have HOURS into this. I know I do (COUNTLESS), but nothing has helped on my end.

Sorry to say though, your scenario does not match mine.

As for site slowness (creating, saving, jumping scroll bar, etc.). FOR THE PAST 4 DAYS I'VE CHANGED OVER TO FIREFOX. Well, all those little "machine gun noises" are gone when the pages load (I was always using IE8). I can get a lot more work done when I use Firefox, EXCEPT Firefox takes me longer when I'm uploading pics, so there I have to use IE8 (why does Auctiva have to make what functions correctly and what doesn't function correctly with WHICH browser so confusing????)

Anyway, when I have FF open to upload pics, Auctiva doesn't recognize newly added pics on my puter, so I have to refresh the page each time, whereas IE8 reads my newly added pics "live", if that makes any sense.

I work on my laptop downstairs (wireless) and my PC upstairs (hard wired) and I have the same problems with Auctiva on both puters, so I can't chalk mine up to my router (and I'm not going to blame my ISP either, like Auctiva wants me to).

The only work-around I've found is using Firefox. But the HTML EDITOR IS STILL SCREWY IN EITHER BROWSER - DIFFERENT PROBLEMS WITH DIFFERENT BROWSERS. I don't know why they even insert a CRAZY-FUNCTIONING editor to begin with.
B bozMember
womandi-

About the photo upload, Google Chrome worked very well for me while I was having the speed issues - much better than FF, IE8 didn't work at all. You may give Chrome a try.

"I work on my laptop downstairs (wireless) and my PC upstairs (hard wired) and I have the same problems with Auctiva on both puters" - aren't they still both going through the same router though? May not hurt to pick up a new one for testing purposes just to make sure. You can get one for $20 and up, maybe even return it if it doesn't do the trick...

Yes, I agree the editor is horrible. Why they cram everyting into a tiny window 452 pixels wide with no word wrap or line breaks is beyond me. You can't use any external editors and paste it back either - what a pain.
G gregtMember
The problem is and always has been for me the fact that the template appears and probably does load from different servers I believe. That slows down the entire operation. Most everything loads except the description and you wait forever for that. But not always. Why the site is designed in this fashion I have no idea. Other auction sites who have their own software do not do anything in this fashion. I know this issue was addressed years ago but I don't think it was ever fixed. I agree, my router is not the problem as everything else is fine. I don't believe the problem rests anyplace else but with Auctiva. If it were not for the fact that I relist the same items every two months I would ditch it and just use Turbolister. Its a memory hog, but it beats online listing hands down. Did you know Auctiva once had a batch lister that really worked well? It was free which is probably why it stopped working.

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