"NETWORK ERROR" messages

mario · Site Admin Joined: 03 Oct 2006 Posts: 7267

The ISP that hosts the main server had an issue between 5 and 1 hour ago, that resulted in many snipes failing with "NETWORK ERROR (1)" message.

I apologize to affected users, there was nothing that could have been done about this.

Mirror server was not affected by the problem.

Cupid · Joined: 09 Aug 2007 Posts: 7970 Location: Bristol, UK

Do you find that you get more failures caused by the Main servers ISP than the Mirror servers ISP?

Are the costs involved with the two servers' ISPs comparable and are there many more servers that you use at the Main than at the Mirror?

I'm asking because I'm wondering if it is worth considering swapping them to increase reliability of the Main server.
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Mark

mario · Site Admin Joined: 03 Oct 2006 Posts: 7267

No, it's probably the same, it's just that mirror server failures are not as noticeable. Both are relatively rare though.

As for the main server, as of recently things became more complicated. Main server is now split into two servers. After scaling it "vertically" for a while by upgrading to a more powerful server, that finally had to come to an end, so the future scaling will from now on done by adding more servers. Right now, the main server is split into two servers hosted by two different ISPs. This is why only a portion of users had the "network error" problem yesterday. And even on that server the problem was intermittent, so not all the snipes failed. The whole "split" idea was realized a few months ago, and while it took a lot of work, it was a life saver when the traffic went up in November and first half of December.