Duplicate Orders

[lhungil]

As I'm halfway around the world, both sites are a bit slow for me. Just loading the test product page is taking me 6-12 seconds (with over three before I receive the first byte). The "live" server appears to be around 200 - 500 ms faster on the test product page load.

I did notice the page load after submitting the creation of a new account appeared slower on both (compared to loading the product pages). On the "live" server significantly slower (more than 30 seconds).

The site is not letting me select a shipping method to continue checkout (probably because of the bogus address I used on the test accounts). Does not display any error just keeps reloading the checkout page.

Have you checked / repaired the DB tables (doubt this would be the cause, but....)? Have you tried creating a test to examine SQL write performance between the two servers?

[RodG]

As I'm halfway around the world, both sites are a bit slow for me.

This is comment that shouldn't be made without a little more research :-)

FWI though, one of the servers is hosted in a Chicago data center, the other is in New York.

Distance doesn't equate to speed (or lack of) though - This is dependent of the path that the data packets travel and the 'weight' of the paths. A fast path from Melbourne to NewYork then back to a server in Sydney can often be a lot faster than a slower path from Melbourne direct to Sydney.

Besides that, although I've told you where the servers are physically located, you might be interested to see where the pages *you* receive are originating from. You can do this with the 'traceroute' (*nix) or 'tracert' (windows) commands.
You'll find that the pages are being served from a host in Melbourne (ot, if you live in Sydney, then it'll be from a sydney based server).
Folk in other countries will find the site is apparently hosted in their own country. Typically, either of these sites should ever be more than 8-10 'hops' away from the client.
I'm getting typical response times of 40-50ms (which is many times better than I get from me sites that are 'hosted in Australia'

Anyway, my point being is that no one should ever consider physical distance to be a determine factor as to how 'fast' a site will respond.

I feel that this is important for Australians to know, because most Australian Webhosts depend in this fallacy in order to survive, and most will charge a 'Premium' to host with them. Now, I'm all for supporting Australian businesses, but not when the try to gouge every last cent out of you/us.

If I were to host this VPS in Australia I'd be looking at least $300-$500pm (about 3 times what we are currently paying). It ain't going to happen. ;-)

OTOH, if *you* know of an Ozzy hosting provider that can supply a VPS with 4cores and 4-5Gb RAM, with ~200gb p/m data transfer for ~$100pm please PM the details.

Anyways, thanks again for your input and suggestions.. You didn't get the money shot, but I appreciate your efforts nonetheless, and yes, you did give me a few things to think about and consider :)

Thanks again.
Cheers
RodG