Shoutbox server resource usage

[Haven]

Morning All

A bit of an open ended thread this one. Pestcontrol noted that apache was eating a lot of system resources on serenity and causing games to lag. He promptly re-niced apache so it has a lower thread priority than the games and this seems to have solved the issue without any noticable performance hit to apache. Anyway thats the background from a few days ago.

I was doing some system updates today and monitoring CPU usage whilst doing so. I noticed that apache is consistently using around 25% of the CPU when the site is busy i.e. early morning / early evening.

Digging a little deeper I notice that of all the requests coming through our server there are 10x more vbshout.php requests than there are showthread.php and each request is returning around twice the ammount of information as the showthread reqeusts (114-122 vs 14-55 KB) and thats me being nice with those stats . So thats 1/20th of the bandwidth going on returning forum info compared to shoutbox info.

So whats this info useful for ?
In a word bottlenecks. If we get into cpu usage issues or bandwidth usage issue (i.e. I ever have to run it over DSL again - hopefully not ...) then the shoutbox will be one of the first things to we will have to turn off. This would obviously be a shame as its so well liked but it is also worth knowing that its a resource hog.

Right thats it really ...

 

[Ronin Storm]

Strikes me that we could work round this one with a different shoutbox module.

The current AJAX implementation does make for a nifty IRC-speed feedback but I suspect that same functionality is also causing our pain. We could switch back to a more traditional "refresh every 10 seconds" shoutbox, as we had with IntegraMOD, but then the fast-feedback effects would be lost and we'd risk less educated users from spamming their refresh key to get the same pace... that could be even more painful than the current situation as that'd be a complete page refresh.

Just kickin' thoughts about.

 

[DeZmond]

I'm surprised that it's responsible for high resource usage, right enough, but I think that given the current rate of visitors I think it's safe to leave the shoutbox as it is for now - although if the community were to grow substantially bigger (ie over a hundred members visiting a day, or something similar) then the other type of shoutbox suggested would be the way to go.

I like the current shoutbox though, for the functionality it provides

 

[thatbloke]

I think the Shoutbox could easily be changed so that it refreshes every 10 seconds or so without losing any of the fun involved... If that means that serenity is taking less of a punch then so be it, as if we want to be talking in realtime we should be using IRC or some similar messaging application

 

[Haven]

I wasnt suggesting we change it I was just pointing out the fact that it is a bit of a bloat monster It can stay as it is for now without any issue.

 

[KillCrazy]

Is it possible to run the shoutbox elsewhere, so it can show up on the main page but be running on a seperate server? If not, could something else similar to a shoutbox be added to the front page that does not run within the forum?

 

[BiG D]

Over at BCG, they had the same concern. The shoutbox had hundreds of thousands of hits in the first day or so it was active. They replaced the auto update with a refresh button beside the shout button, and last I heard it was working just fine.

 

[elDiablo]

Out of interest, is this a shoutbox you made yourself, or is it this one?

If you want, I could write a lovely little AJAX shoutbox that would only do a boolean check every 10 seconds per client, and would only send the latest statement every time. Would make it nice and fast Give me a few days and I'll show you an example.

 

[Haven]

erm we're using vbulletin so I can pretty much guarantee we're not using that one Cant remember what we are using off the top of my head... I cant even remember if I installed it or whether it was RoninStorm ... damn I need an external brain storage attachment

 

[Taffy]

erm we're using vbulletin so I can pretty much guarantee we're not using that one Cant remember what we are using off the top of my head... I cant even remember if I installed it or whether it was RoninStorm ... damn I need an external brain storage attachment

Yes, those storage devices are nifty little things...

 

[Ronin Storm]

Is it possible to run the shoutbox elsewhere

Possibly, but not with the development time we have available to us in the short term. That's something for the "in the future" slot.

If not, could something else similar to a shoutbox be added to the front page that does not run within the forum?

Reminds me of these IRC-integration conversations we've had. That would give something featureful and solid for that front page and improve its overall usefulness, so that's a big plus in my books.

 

[Ronin Storm]

I cant even remember if I installed it or whether it was RoninStorm

Teehee. It was you mate.

That said, I've upgraded it a couple of times since you installed it so I've got the better picture.

It's actually vBShout.