I need some volunteer beta testers...

[eire1274]

Just released a Flash introduction for my website to replace the streaming WMV that's been there.

Size (for broadband version) is 4.5Mb.

If ya'll could cruise on over and give me an idea how long you see the "Loading..." animation before it starts, that would be helpful. Please include your locale and internet connection.

Thanks!

Link in my sig below.

[eire1274]

If anybody just tried, sorry. The server was due for a reboot (updating webserver software) so I decided it do it now, plus now I can see access stats real-time!

[t00lb0x]

I'm using IE and DSL w/ Windows XP.

I see nothing period, just a white page. Then I get


Action canceled
Internet Explorer was unable to link to the Web page you requested. The page might be temporarily unavailable.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Please try the following:

Click the Refresh button, or try again later.

If you have visited this page previously and you want to view what has been stored on your computer, click File, and then click Work Offline.

For information about offline browsing with Internet Explorer, click the Help menu, and then click Contents and Index.




Internet Explorer

[eire1274]

Try again, t00lb0x.

[t00lb0x]

I refershed after I posted that, like a second.

Its still loading now.

[bejohnson]

Took a total of twenty-eight seconds from the click of the mouse to done. I'm using a 1250 kbs DSL and a 550 mHz Athlon at the moment. I'm located in Atlanta very close to one of the Internet backbones.

Edit later. I tried loading again and It's taking over 3 minutes and still loading. What is your upload bandwidth?

[t00lb0x]

Just loaded 10 seonds ago.

[bejohnson]

I cannot get it to load now. Just says loading.

[t00lb0x]

Took 3 seconds now.

BeJohnson make sure to clear your cache and temp internet files [or this one specifically] before retrying.

[ch0g0nda]

After a minute I gave up on it.

"Loading"

While it's a pretty animation it does get old fast.

[eire1274]

Originally posted by ch0g0nda
After a minute I gave up on it.

"Loading"

While it's a pretty animation it does get old fast.
What kind of connection?

[Artcwolf]

6.0 down 384 up....been attempting to load for over a minute now. I'm seeing an average of 215 kbps from your site while it's attempting to load whatever it's trying to load...

Ok, just finished and now I'm dancing to some techo stuff.

[ch0g0nda]

Originally posted by eire1274
What kind of connection? Cable.

I've never actually had to wait that long (and longer, as the case would have been) for a flash animation to load.

[eire1274]

Originally posted by WiebeMan
I tried it:

Conditions:
512kbps ADSL connection
Windows XP
Mozilla Firefox
Flash player 7

Loading time (broadband presentation): 5:41
Loading time (dialup presentation): 0:21
Yikes! That's like 16kps!

Seem to be getting varied results. Most US folks seem to be quite quick, Canada and elsewhere seems to take a big hit.

[wazman]

It took two minutes for it to load on my system. 3000 down/256 up.

Oh, BTW - I's in Illinois.

[bejohnson]

Just tried it again on my 3.00 gHz P4 on my ADSL @ 1250 kbs speed. I took 2 minutes 35 seconds to load. Not good.

With it in the cache it loads in 1.1 seconds.

[eire1274]

Thanks for the help, guys.

Still streamlining all this. I need to recompress the audio, and tweak the upload settings on the server side.

[Jayz0r]

Took over 2 minutes here :(

(UK 1mbit cable)

[eire1274]

Curious, not sure why the wildly differing results. It does not seem to be a limitation of the server itself. Perhaps the Cox network, and it's presence on the 'net?

[blpeterson]

2 minutes and 40 seconds here at the hotel in Seoul, Korea. 1.4 seconds to load out of the cache after downloading it the first time.

[bejohnson]

Looks like you only have about 28 kBs throughput on your uploads which is equivalent to an upload speed of 225 kbs.

[L_P]

From what I see your upstream is too slow for this size of file, it took close to a minute the first time around. only seeing around 130Kbps from your site and I have a 3.5Mbps down stream, while checking your site I wanted to make sure it wasnt me so I quickly checked another site and pulled a 10MB file in a few seconds so it isnt my connection. after your Flash file was loaded I would say its looks ok, just a standard Flash, you left plenty of time for someone to read everything on each page which is a good thing.
But if I was you I would find a way to make your flash file smaller in size.
However you keep stating that it only takes you about four seconds to load it each time. this is only because of a couple things. either your hosting the site on a server on your internal network or your flash file is still in your temporary internet files.
Your biggest problem I see is that you do not have enough up stream for a file this large. most people will give up after about twenty seconds. I would play around with the file size if you get it down to a quarter your current size it should be fine.
-L_P

[And|]

Okay, It has been over 2 or 3 min. so now Im giving up on the broadband version.

Windows XP
Mozilla FireFox


HAHAHAHA, It just started... cool

[Maro]

Checking at work via the WAN is about 4 mins through a proxy server.

The Routing is from from here to Another office in Sydney, then out over the undersea cable to San Francisco, Proxy is in Indianapolis and on from there.

[eire1274]

The server is limited to 512kbps upstream. As I do have several other PCs on the network, the limitation is in place to keep the webserver from entirely dominating the internet connection (512kbps would constitute approx. 1/6th of the total bandwidth available).

However, for whatever reason, nobody outside of Omaha seems to realize the full connect speed. I'm pretty sure it has to be something with the Cox network, but I'm curious because a friend with Qwest DSL (256k, plus it's a different backbone from Cox) can pull the file in 17-18 seconds fresh, about 1.5 cached.

I think, for the time being, I'm going to further compress the images and audio, see if I can't cut the file size down by 50-75%. Unfortunately, there's only so much JPEG or MP3 compression you can do before you're getting negligible file size reduction and just screwing the quality.

I'll get on it in the morning (just spent an exhaustive day at the Omaha Zoo with my boys and my 3 year old niece who is in from Virginia for the week) and see how much I can chop it before it looks/sounds like trash. I'll keep the high-fidelity version for catalog CDs.

[eire1274]

Originally posted by L_P
...either your hosting the site on a server on your internal network or your flash file is still in your temporary internet files.
Thanks for the suggestion. However, my current setup allows me to redirect traffic out to the Cox DNS and IP servers and then back into the webserver via a directed socket (the exterior socket and interior socket do not match, and are route matched by my... well... router! This prevents me from accidently pulling directly from the webserver's internal IP). Plus, I also test on another cable modem driven machine, and a DSL driven machine, both in different locations, on different ISP backbones. All of those worked well, so I then put the call out here to see how it worked abroad.

In all testing situations, I either shut off caching (force refresh on every access) or dump the cache manually before testing.

I'm wondering, also, if the webserver may be lagging a bit due to multiple access. I'll have to conduct a test tomorrow and see how many simultaneous access requests it is handling before CPU time is peaked.

[coldstatic]

ok well i live here and it took me 3 min and usually i have realy good dl times. using ie win xp. i will check it atr work too. took about 4 min.

[eire1274]

Isolated *part* of the problem. The published version of the flash introduction linked to a file that contained 128kbps MP3 audio previously, but my HTML was linking to the correct version. This explains my discrepancies compared to what the world was seeing.

I relabeled this "Extreme" (new 3rd option in the opening menu) and included the proper 112kbps optimized MP3Pro audio, which is roughly 15% smaller than the previous file.

The "Broadband" option now contains 40kbps MP3Pro audio and is roughly 1/3rd the size of the "Extreme" option.

This should cut load times dramatically.

I'm also investigating why the server never gets close to the 512kbps upload cap. I'm rather baffled by that. Going to try some alternate socket routing configurations and see if there is some latency being generated by the current mapping schematic.

[Maro]

Took around 0.5 Secs

:D :D

:thumb

[eire1274]

Did you clear your cache first? On a fast connection, it should be around 3-4 seconds at best.

[Maro]

I have not checked it from here before - I am at home now

[eire1274]

Um... WOW! Apparently the little socket change I did was the key to the problem.

Thanks buddy! I can sleep now!

[Maro]

Originally posted by eire1274
Um... WOW! Apparently the little socket change I did was the key to the problem.

Thanks buddy! I can sleep now!

No Probs!

:thumb