Hi all,

I mentioned this in another thread, but since it was off-topic, I thought it might be good to see how widespread this problem is. I noticed Nick just mentioned this in a Connect issue, so it's not just me.

For the last week or so, creators.xna.com, forums.xna.com, xbox.com, marketplace.xbox.com have all been painfully slow (taking several minutes to load). The same thing seems to affect the dashboard when I tro to navigate and download the Arcade games. I've found a few people posting in forums elsewhere seeing this problem too. It looks like it mgiht only be affecting the UK.

It's pretty frustrating (especially when you're opening large numbers of threads here to read!), so if we can find any patterns or info that might help MS track it down, maybe something can be done.

If this happens to you, please post your location, ISP (and maybe a traceroute to forums.xna.com). If you're in the UK and it *doesn't* happen to you, it'd also be useful to see your location and traceroute. It might not affect the whole of the UK.


Location: Cheshire, England
ISP: Sky (Easynet?)
Traceroute:

C:\Users\Danny>tracert forums.xna.com

Tracing route to forums.xna.com [65.55.42.190]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  myrouter.home [192.168.0.1]
  2    36 ms    31 ms    27 ms  cr1.lvhoo.uk.easynet.net [87.87.250.8]
  3    23 ms    22 ms    22 ms  80.238.60.193
  4    33 ms    32 ms    32 ms  bu4.er10.txlon.ov.easynet.net [89.200.135.142]
  5    32 ms    32 ms    32 ms  bu4.gr10.bllon.uk.easynet.net [89.200.135.143]
  6   101 ms   101 ms   100 ms  te0-0-0-1.gr10.bwnyc.us.easynet.net [87.86.77.105]
  7   100 ms   101 ms   100 ms  NYIIX.AS8075.MSN.NET [198.32.160.191]
  8   100 ms   100 ms   102 ms  ge-7-3-0-56.nyc-64cb-1a.ntwk.msn.net [207.46.47.223]
  9   101 ms   100 ms   101 ms  ge-7-0-0-0.nyc-64cb-1b.ntwk.msn.net [207.46.47.21]
 10   184 ms   183 ms   198 ms  ge-0-1-0-0.co1-64c-1b.ntwk.msn.net [207.46.43.174]
 11   183 ms   184 ms   184 ms  ten9-1.co1-76e-1.ntwk.msn.net [207.46.47.189]
 12     *        *        *     Request timed out.

Here's some other forum threads discussing what appears to be the same issue:

http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/ukonline/3647863-xbox-live-xboxcom-problems-on-uk-online.html?fpart=all&vc=1
http://www.oxm.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?p=134335&sid=588c17e4cf76c55f98114a9a17bcd186

Edit: I just noticed that UKOnline (being talked about in the top thread) are "Part of the easynet group". MY sky traceroutes say Easynet too. I'm wondering if it's something to do with Easynet rather than MS. Would be interesting to see if anyone on a non-Easynet ISP is having this problem (or anyone on an Easynet ISP *isn't* having this problem).

Hmm, I think I noticed this as well. The site works perfectly on my computer, however on another computer on a different network it did take ages to load.

I'm not sure the ISP of the other network but I may test it out when I'm there next (tomorrow I believe).

same problem here. The forum pages are terribly slow, while other websites load perfectly fast.

I am located in Stuttgart, Germany. Anybody else from Germany facing slow load times of the forum pages?

Has Microsoft made an official statement about this issue?

C:\Dokumente und Einstellungen\user>tracert forums.xna.com

Routenverfolgung zu forums.xna.com [65.55.42.190]  über maximal 30 Abschnitte:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  my.router [192.168.1.1]
  2     7 ms     6 ms     6 ms  lo1.br01.str.de.hansenet.net [213.191.89.16]
  3     5 ms     6 ms     6 ms  ae0-101.cr01.str.de.hansenet.net [213.191.88.193]
  4    10 ms    10 ms     9 ms  so-0-1-0-0.cr01.fra.de.hansenet.net [213.191.87.142]
  5     9 ms     9 ms    10 ms  ae1-102.pr01.fra.de.hansenet.net [62.109.109.240]
  6     9 ms     9 ms     9 ms  fra32-hansenet-3.fra.seabone.net [89.221.34.61]
  7   203 ms   194 ms   215 ms  ash2-new50-racc1.new.seabone.net [195.22.216.149]
  8   291 ms   215 ms   211 ms  microsoft-us-ash2.ash.seabone.net [195.22.206.42]
  9     *        *        *     Zeitüberschreitung der Anforderung.
 10     *        *        *     Zeitüberschreitung der Anforderung.
 11     *        *        *     Zeitüberschreitung der Anforderung.
 12     *        *        *     Zeitüberschreitung der Anforderung.
 13     *        *        *     Zeitüberschreitung der Anforderung.
 14     *        *        *     Zeitüberschreitung der Anforderung.
 15     *        *        *     Zeitüberschreitung der Anforderung.
 16     *        *        *     Zeitüberschreitung der Anforderung.
 17     *        *        *     Zeitüberschreitung der Anforderung.
 18     *        *

zissakos:

Has Microsoft made an official statement about this issue?

There's really no statement to make. It's the internet and sometimes it's slow. For instance, right now I'm on a netbook on a bus using the wi-fi which is likely hooked up to some sort of satellite internet (I'm guessing) and this page loaded up as fast as a webpage pretty much can. Load times can be affected by visitor load, your location, their servers and whether there's maintenance going on, and a number of other things.

Feel free to file a Connect issue, but I'm not sure there's much they can reasonably do to increase the speed of the website.

Nick Gravelyn:

There's really no statement to make. It's the internet and sometimes it's slow.

That's not completely true. While it's fixed now (so I'm not sure what Zissakos problem is), when this thread was created, there was a massive issue with accessing Xbox.com/xna.com and the marketplace from several UK ISPs (possibly only "easynet" ISPs). It was being reported on various forums by people across the country. The problem might not have been Microsofts, but it wasn't "just slow". It was very badly broken, and someone did something to fix it.

The internet is often slow, but the internet also often has problems that need fixing :-)

From home, I often get that problem. From work, I don't get it as often. This may be a time-of-day thing, or it may be an ISP thing. We have high-quality, well-connected ISPs at work (because we surface our IP through our co-lo data center over a T3). At home, I previously had Covad/Speakeasy, and I now have (blech) Comcast. In both cases, the home experience had a lot of slow loads. My guess is that the slow loads are caused by packet loss causing the TCP connections to stall out and not recover very quickly -- as if a single packet loss would cause a 5-minute stall... Although I'm sure it could be some load-balanced server conking out and paging like crazy or something, too.

Danny Tuppeny:

The internet is often slow, but the internet also often has problems that need fixing :-)

True, there are problems and it may have been broken. Make no mistake, I do think it's good to report when people are having issues with the site; I guess my main point is that I don't see what statement there is to be made. I'll just change what I said to: "It's the internet and sometimes it's slow and/or broken." :)

So let the team know, but don't expect any sort of formal announcement of what's going wrong or why it's slow. Just hope it gets fixed. :)