Your tracert isn't incredibly bad, but it isn't great either. We're not seeing anything in our logs which would lead me to believe that the servers, applications or network is running slow on our end. Chalk it up to a temporary problem, possibly routing, for now.

It's always been slow for me.

I just did a Trace with NeoTrace Pro, and may have one reason why it's so slow:

Fullsize: http://img99.imageshack.us/my.php?image=traceru7.jpg

(see screenshot) my "packet" gets routed to Washington DC,
but then instead of getting further routed directly from there to MI,
for some unknown reason, my packet gets routed back to Europe, and THEN directly to MI.

Here's the text from that trace, also, repeated traces give the same results:

NeoTrace Trace  Version 3.25  Results
Target: forums.wincustomize.com
Date: 10.09.2008 (Wednesday), 00:24:08
Nodes: 17

Node Data
Node Net Reg IP Address      Location            Node Name
   1   -   - 192.168.2.103   Hamm                Laptop
   2   1   - 192.168.2.1     Unknown            
   3   -   - 0.0.0.0         Unknown             Keine Antwort
   4   2   - 217.0.83.22     Unknown            
   5   3   1 62.154.16.161   Frankfurt am Main   f-ea5.f.de.net.dtag.de
   6   4   2 4.68.110.253    Frankfurt am Main   te-4-4.car2.frankfurt1.level3.net
   7   4   2 4.68.118.94     Frankfurt am Main   ae-31-53.ebr1.frankfurt1.level3.net
   8   4   2 4.69.132.141    PARIS               ae-2.ebr2.paris1.level3.net
   9   4   2 4.69.137.54     WASHINGTON D.C.     ae-42.ebr2.washington1.level3.net
  10   4   2 4.69.132.69     WASHINGTON D.C.     ae-2.ebr2.chicago2.level3.net
  11   4   2 4.69.140.193    STOCKHOLM           ae-5.ebr2.chicago1.level3.net
  12   4   2 4.69.133.241    Detroit             ae-8-8.car1.detroit1.level3.net
  13   4   2 4.69.133.246    Detroit             ae-11-11.car2.detroit1.level3.net
  14   4   2 4.53.74.54      Detroit             i123.car2.detroit1.level3.net
  15   5   - 216.234.104.162 Detroit            
  16   6   3 209.124.63.234  Livonia             forums.wincustomize.com
  17   6   3 209.124.63.234  Livonia             forums.wincustomize.com

Packet Data
Node High Low  Avg  Tot  Lost
   1    0    0    0    1    0
   2    3    3    3    1    0
   3 ---- ---- ----    2    2
   4   26   26   26    1    0
   5   15   15   15    1    0
   6  103  103  103    1    0
   7   27   27   27    1    0
   8   32   32   32    1    0
   9  109  109  109    1    0
  10  143  143  143    1    0
  11  129  129  129    1    0
  12  128  128  128    1    0
  13  154  154  154    1    0
  14  217  217  217    1    0
  15  189  189  189    1    0
  16  183  183  183    1    0
  17  141  141  141    1    0

And here's the results using Tracert:

Routenverfolgung zu forums.wincustomize.com [209.124.63.234] über maximal 30 Abschnitte:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  speedport.ip [192.168.2.1]
  2     *        *        *     Zeitüberschreitung der Anforderung.
  3    16 ms    22 ms    22 ms  217.0.83.22
  4    20 ms    23 ms    24 ms  f-ea5.F.DE.net.DTAG.DE [62.154.16.161]
  5    16 ms    23 ms    20 ms  te-4-4.car2.Frankfurt1.Level3.net [4.68.110.253]
  6    30 ms    35 ms    18 ms  ae-31-53.ebr1.Frankfurt1.Level3.net [4.68.118.94]
  7    33 ms    37 ms    35 ms  ae-2.ebr2.Paris1.Level3.net [4.69.132.141]
  8   122 ms   109 ms   123 ms  ae-42.ebr2.Washington1.Level3.net [4.69.137.54]
  9   132 ms   140 ms   158 ms  ae-2.ebr2.Chicago2.Level3.net [4.69.132.69]
 10   129 ms   143 ms   144 ms  ae-5.ebr2.Chicago1.Level3.net [4.69.140.193]
 11   239 ms   207 ms   203 ms  ae-8-8.car1.Detroit1.Level3.net [4.69.133.241]
 12   126 ms   146 ms   142 ms  ae-11-11.car2.Detroit1.Level3.net [4.69.133.246]
 13   123 ms   119 ms   119 ms  I123.car2.Detroit1.Level3.net [4.53.74.54]
 14   126 ms   122 ms   137 ms  216.234.104.162
 15   133 ms   128 ms   143 ms  forums.wincustomize.com [209.124.63.234]
 16   137 ms   131 ms   141 ms  forums.wincustomize.com [209.124.63.234]

Ablaufverfolgung beendet.

Oddly enough, Tracert does not show Stockholm.

Maybe the servers have forgot where Canada is

( note, above quote done manually, quote button not working )

Andrew, with no disrespect or offence, please feel free to just remove all my posts here, I could create many separate posts for the issues I am having/seeing but with the WHOLE SITE crawling like a snail for me I have better ways I could spend a couple of hours other than watching the throbber in FF go round and round.

Well, it's significantly faster from home than it was at work, which is odd.  My home setup is a cheap Earthlink 768k account and my work one is a 3MB Business DSL.

I'm running the latest Firefox on both machines. I was getting 40 second page render times at work and this page at home completed in 1.33 seconds.

If it helps, I'm running a single-server/multi-client business licensed AVG Antivirus at work and I have Avira at home.

I don't know if this'll help either, but here's my tracert from home...

Tracing route to forums.galciv2.com [209.124.63.234]

over a maximum of 30 hops:



  1    17 ms    17 ms    17 ms  (Address deleted for security)

  2    17 ms    12 ms    30 ms  (Address deleted for security)

  3    35 ms    18 ms    34 ms  gig5-3-0.dllatxl3-rtr1.texas.rr.com [72.179.205.20]

  4    36 ms    36 ms    28 ms  ae-4-0.cr0.dfw10.tbone.rr.com [66.109.6.88]

  5    39 ms    39 ms    22 ms  ae-1-0.pr0.dfw10.tbone.rr.com [66.109.6.179]

  6    37 ms    36 ms    27 ms  te3-2.mpd01.dfw03.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.11.49]

  7    37 ms    37 ms    26 ms  te3-2.mpd01.dfw01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.6.57]

  8    46 ms    30 ms    33 ms  te7-3.mpd01.mci01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.3.18]

  9    59 ms    63 ms    68 ms  te8-4.mpd01.ord01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.7.186]

 10    60 ms    48 ms    42 ms  gi12-0-0.core01.ord01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.1.97]

 11    68 ms    66 ms    65 ms  po5-0.core01.tol01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.5.154]

 12    53 ms    67 ms    51 ms  po5-0.core01.dtw04.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.1.2]

 13    78 ms    78 ms    64 ms  vl3501.na31.b020673-1.dtw04.atlas.cogentco.com [38.112.37.82]

 14    67 ms    67 ms    54 ms  38.104.38.10

 15    66 ms    68 ms     *     216.234.104.162

 16    50 ms    51 ms    66 ms  234.63.124.209.sfldmi01.utropicmedia.net [209.124.63.234]

 17    84 ms    61 ms    51 ms  234.63.124.209.sfldmi01.utropicmedia.net [209.124.63.234]



Trace complete.

I don't know what to say.  I started navigating to this page just under 9 minutes ago and it's taken me that long to start this post.  That's dedication, huh?   

I can't say what kind of issue it is, but it's only happening on the Stardock Websites.  I'm not having problem anywhere else.  I don't know why it's only affecting some of us and others are coming through ok, but the lack of people signed in to the Galciv2 forums should be an indication that it's fairly widespread.

As I said before, I can get through from home smoothly, but at work it's very slow.  If it's not in the server, perhaps it's in the code being sent to our browsers.  Whatever it is, it's getting more and more frustrating, especially in the light of the new heavy handed moderation threats being thrown around.

Please understand that those of us affected can't just browse around and find stuff here.  If you want to get an idea of how it feels, try logging in with a 1200 baud modem and start browsing.

While I don't have any kind of an answer to provide at the moment, we are looking into the problem using the data you all have provided. Please continue to post any 'odd' diagnostic reports [you] may come up with.

Same here, the forums are really slow. I have a 20mb/s connection and every other forum or website loads near instant, but these forums are taking anywhere from 30-60 seconds per click on a topic. Firefox's info bar basically says connecting/waiting for to scripts.stardock.com while it sits there. I am on the forums.demigodthegame.com just FYI.

Okay, I'm impressed by all of the routing data, interesting to know you can do this, are we using a specific program to accomplish these traces?

They're standard DOS commands.  Just open a DOS window and type PING, TRACERT or PATHPING a space and the destination (forums.stardock.com for example).  If you want to capture it in a text file, add another space and type >text.txt or whatever you care to name the file.  It'll show up in the path that you used to issue the command (C:\Windows\Profiles\Me for example.)

Seems fixed. 

Last three pages loaded is a handful of seconds. Dramatic improvement. Anyone else noticing it or am I just getting lucky?

My TRACERT data is virtually identical compared to when I was running slow.

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>tracert forums.galciv2.com

Tracing route to forums.galciv2.com [209.124.63.234]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms     2 ms    <1 ms  dslmodem.domain [192.168.1.1]
  2    33 ms    33 ms    32 ms  
  3    35 ms    35 ms    34 ms  so-0-2-3-0.CORE-RTR1.BOS.verizon-gni.net [130.81.7.193]
  4    37 ms    36 ms    37 ms  so-0-2-0-0.BB-RTR1.BOS.verizon-gni.net [130.81.20.84]
  5    35 ms    37 ms    36 ms  130.81.17.61
  6    42 ms    48 ms    43 ms  130.81.17.24
  7    41 ms    41 ms    57 ms  so-7-0-0-0.PEER-RTR1.NY111.verizon-gni.net [130.81.17.131]
  8    42 ms    41 ms    39 ms  po2-0.core01.jfk05.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.11.45]
  9    41 ms    42 ms    41 ms  te4-1.mpd01.jfk05.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.1.153]
 10    42 ms    41 ms    40 ms  vl3491.ccr04.jfk02.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.7.9]
 11    47 ms    45 ms    47 ms  te2-4.ccr02.bos01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.6.9]
 12    48 ms    46 ms    44 ms  gi11-0-0.core01.bos01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.5.21]
 13    64 ms    63 ms    65 ms  po6-0.core01.cle01.atlas.cogentco.com [66.28.4.158]
 14    65 ms    66 ms    65 ms  po6-0.core01.tol01.atlas.cogentco.com [66.28.4.222]
 15    66 ms    65 ms    66 ms  po6-0.core01.dtw04.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.25.110]
 16    65 ms    66 ms    65 ms  vl3501.na31.b020673-1.dtw04.atlas.cogentco.com [38.112.37.82]
 17    64 ms    71 ms    78 ms  38.104.38.10
 18    66 ms    66 ms    65 ms  216.234.104.162
 19    68 ms    67 ms    69 ms  forums.galciv2.com [209.124.63.234]
 20    68 ms    65 ms    67 ms  forums.galciv2.com [209.124.63.234]

Trace complete.

I think this low level path stuff is a dead end. I see no difference between this and my previous posting yet before I was running 30-45 seconds per page now its 2-3 seconds.

Still fast for me consistently for the last 14 hours but I also am not declaring victory. Clearly while my access was fast others were slow. This just indicates the variablity of the problem. It also to some extent indicates that this is *not* a client side problem. I've gone from working fine to extreme slowdown and back again without a single hardware or software change to my PC. How can that indicate a problem with my PC, or anyone else's PC for that matter?