Slow ntdev posting times...

NTDEV
1

For the last two to three weeks, it seems like the amount of time
required for a post to appear on ntdev has been getting worse and worse.
I don’t mean to complain, as it is a free service, but this didn’t seem
to happen a month ago, and I am personally having posting times of
generally greater than two hours, with four hours or more occurring not
uncommonly. For example, here’s one that just came in (21:42), and I
according to the header I sent it at (17:06). Apparently, it was
delayed for 50 minutes or so on my end, but that still leaves a lot of
time. I know some other people have reported this problem as well,
atlhough I don’t know if the magnitude of delays are similar. While
this is less than desirable, I’m also receiving some e-mails out of
order; this may be due to my side; I don’t know. In any case, I guess
what I am wondering is first whether my experiences are typical; and the
other is there some particular reason why this has gotten so much worse
so recently, and is there something that can be done about it?

mm

2

Actually, I haven’t noticed this, although on couple of occasions I, indeed, had to wait for quite a while before I could see my post. However, these delay seemed so exceptional to me that I did not even take them into consideration. In any case, IIRC, it happened quite a while ago…

When it comes to “complaining” about things that happened within last two weeks, then I can tell you that I have noticed the following problems( I had never encountered them before):

  1. On 5-6 ocassions I just could not access OSRONLINE.COM for extended periods of time, i.e.
    for at least for 2-3 hours.

  2. On 2-3 occasions I could not access some certain OSR articles for a couple of hours, although I still could post

Please note that I have never encountered these problems before mid-July…

Anton Bassov

3

I don’t have any problems since I sign in directly to the OSR news server using NNTP. Email, while cute, is not as reliable. At work, my email is blocked - SMTP & POP3.

–
David J. Craig
Engineer, Sr. Staff Software Systems
Broadcom Corporation

“Martin O’Brien” wrote in message news:xxxxx@ntdev…
For the last two to three weeks, it seems like the amount of time required for a post to appear on ntdev has been getting worse and worse. I don’t mean to complain, as it is a free service, but this didn’t seem to happen a month ago, and I am personally having posting times of generally greater than two hours, with four hours or more occurring not uncommonly. For example, here’s one that just came in (21:42), and I according to the header I sent it at (17:06). Apparently, it was delayed for 50 minutes or so on my end, but that still leaves a lot of time. I know some other people have reported this problem as well, atlhough I don’t know if the magnitude of delays are similar. While this is less than desirable, I’m also receiving some e-mails out of order; this may be due to my side; I don’t know. In any case, I guess what I am wondering is first whether my experiences are typical; and the other is there some particular reason why this has gotten so much worse so recently, and is there something that can be done about it?

mm

4

Yes, we’ve gotten complaints about it. We’re looking into it, though at this point it’s still a mystery.

If you’re experiencing massive delays let me know off list, knowing who is seeing it might help in root causing the issue.

(And, in the future, please send any inquiries about list issues to xxxxx@lists.osr.com or xxxxx@lists.osr.com. One of your friendly neighborhood list slaves will be happy to put you at ease.)

-scott

Scott Noone
Software Engineer
OSR Open Systems Resources, Inc.
http://www.osronline.com

“Martin O’Brien” wrote in message news:xxxxx@ntdev…
For the last two to three weeks, it seems like the amount of time required for a post to appear on ntdev has been getting worse and worse. I don’t mean to complain, as it is a free service, but this didn’t seem to happen a month ago, and I am personally having posting times of generally greater than two hours, with four hours or more occurring not uncommonly. For example, here’s one that just came in (21:42), and I according to the header I sent it at (17:06). Apparently, it was delayed for 50 minutes or so on my end, but that still leaves a lot of time. I know some other people have reported this problem as well, atlhough I don’t know if the magnitude of delays are similar. While this is less than desirable, I’m also receiving some e-mails out of order; this may be due to my side; I don’t know. In any case, I guess what I am wondering is first whether my experiences are typical; and the other is there some particular reason why this has gotten so much worse so recently, and is there something that can be done about it?

mm

5

We’re very concerned about posting speed, and have historically worked very hard to try to ensure posts are processed in “near real time.” We appreciate the feedback, and rely on the members to let us know when things aren’t working right. As SNoone mentioned, the best place to send feedback is xxxxx@osr.com.

Email is still the most common way of participating in the lists (with the web interface running a close second, since its introduction).

There are several things that will affect the delta between the time you SEND an email to NTDEV/NTFSD and when that email is delivered:

a) Load on our T1s. We’ve seen exceptionally high loads on our T1s here at OSR over the past month… We don’t know why. We’re considering a network configuration change to help balance the line utilization better.

b) The amount of spam in the mail stream to OSR (and to the world). Every posting sent to the lists is scanned for spam, viruses, and porn by a large commercial scanning service. They use a store and forward system. Here’s an interesting statistic: Overall, we find that about 80% of the email sent to OSR.COM (including lists.OSR.COM) is spam. This amounts to many thousands of email messages a day. Though the spam scanning service uses large, redundant, clusters of machines to perform the scanning, there are times when they get backed-up. Sometimes, the backups amount to a couple of hours. We agree it’s annoying. We think getting spam would be more annoying.

c) The load on the list servers - part 1. NTDEV and NTFSD have reached record levels of membership. It’s not uncommon to see the list server machine hit 90% CPU utilization at various times during the day. We don’t think this is a limiting factor in message throughput (it’s already a rather beefy machine, with dual processors and tons of memory), but we’re checking into it.

d) The load on the list server – part 2. The number of list members is so high that we’ve had to upgrade our list server license to accommodate them. Even with this upgrade, we’re currently license limited to sending SOME number of emails per hour (we’re not sure exactly how many, to be honest). Given we don’t know the max number, we’re certainly not sure how often we hit this limit and what happens when the limit is reached… this is something we’re investigating.

So, that’s a looong post to say… “we’re working on it”,

Peter
Partner-level List Slave

6

Thanks to both Peter and Scott. Scott, as you suggested, I will contact
you off list with my information.

Thanks,

mm

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of xxxxx@osr.com
Sent: Friday, August 03, 2007 11:07
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: RE:[ntdev] Slow ntdev posting times…

We’re very concerned about posting speed, and have historically worked
very hard to try to ensure posts are processed in “near real time.” We
appreciate the feedback, and rely on the members to let us know when
things aren’t working right. As SNoone mentioned, the best place to
send feedback is xxxxx@osr.com.

Email is still the most common way of participating in the lists (with
the web interface running a close second, since its introduction).

There are several things that will affect the delta between the time you
SEND an email to NTDEV/NTFSD and when that email is delivered:

a) Load on our T1s. We’ve seen exceptionally high loads on our T1s here
at OSR over the past month… We don’t know why. We’re considering a
network configuration change to help balance the line utilization
better.

b) The amount of spam in the mail stream to OSR (and to the world).
Every posting sent to the lists is scanned for spam, viruses, and porn
by a large commercial scanning service. They use a store and forward
system. Here’s an interesting statistic: Overall, we find that about
80% of the email sent to OSR.COM (including lists.OSR.COM) is spam.
This amounts to many thousands of email messages a day. Though the spam
scanning service uses large, redundant, clusters of machines to perform
the scanning, there are times when they get backed-up. Sometimes, the
backups amount to a couple of hours. We agree it’s annoying. We think
getting spam would be more annoying.

c) The load on the list servers - part 1. NTDEV and NTFSD have reached
record levels of membership. It’s not uncommon to see the list server
machine hit 90% CPU utilization at various times during the day. We
don’t think this is a limiting factor in message throughput (it’s
already a rather beefy machine, with dual processors and tons of
memory), but we’re checking into it.

d) The load on the list server – part 2. The number of list members is
so high that we’ve had to upgrade our list server license to accommodate
them. Even with this upgrade, we’re currently license limited to
sending SOME number of emails per hour (we’re not sure exactly how many,
to be honest). Given we don’t know the max number, we’re certainly not
sure how often we hit this limit and what happens when the limit is
reached… this is something we’re investigating.

So, that’s a looong post to say… “we’re working on it”,

Peter
Partner-level List Slave

NTDEV is sponsored by OSR

For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
http://www.osr.com/seminars

To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at
http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer

7

For me, the NNTP posts appear in the newsgroup immediately, but I get the
email version of the same post much later, sometimes 2-3 hours later.

This occurs only during particular hours of day, around 18-21 GMT.

Maxim Shatskih, Windows DDK MVP
StorageCraft Corporation
xxxxx@storagecraft.com
http://www.storagecraft.com

----- Original Message -----
From: “Martin O’Brien”
To: “Windows System Software Devs Interest List”
Sent: Saturday, August 04, 2007 3:12 AM
Subject: RE: [ntdev] Slow ntdev posting times…

Thanks to both Peter and Scott. Scott, as you suggested, I will contact
you off list with my information.

Thanks,

mm

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of xxxxx@osr.com
Sent: Friday, August 03, 2007 11:07
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: RE:[ntdev] Slow ntdev posting times…

We’re very concerned about posting speed, and have historically worked
very hard to try to ensure posts are processed in “near real time.” We
appreciate the feedback, and rely on the members to let us know when
things aren’t working right. As SNoone mentioned, the best place to
send feedback is xxxxx@osr.com.

Email is still the most common way of participating in the lists (with
the web interface running a close second, since its introduction).

There are several things that will affect the delta between the time you
SEND an email to NTDEV/NTFSD and when that email is delivered:

a) Load on our T1s. We’ve seen exceptionally high loads on our T1s here
at OSR over the past month… We don’t know why. We’re considering a
network configuration change to help balance the line utilization
better.

b) The amount of spam in the mail stream to OSR (and to the world).
Every posting sent to the lists is scanned for spam, viruses, and porn
by a large commercial scanning service. They use a store and forward
system. Here’s an interesting statistic: Overall, we find that about
80% of the email sent to OSR.COM (including lists.OSR.COM) is spam.
This amounts to many thousands of email messages a day. Though the spam
scanning service uses large, redundant, clusters of machines to perform
the scanning, there are times when they get backed-up. Sometimes, the
backups amount to a couple of hours. We agree it’s annoying. We think
getting spam would be more annoying.

c) The load on the list servers - part 1. NTDEV and NTFSD have reached
record levels of membership. It’s not uncommon to see the list server
machine hit 90% CPU utilization at various times during the day. We
don’t think this is a limiting factor in message throughput (it’s
already a rather beefy machine, with dual processors and tons of
memory), but we’re checking into it.

d) The load on the list server – part 2. The number of list members is
so high that we’ve had to upgrade our list server license to accommodate
them. Even with this upgrade, we’re currently license limited to
sending SOME number of emails per hour (we’re not sure exactly how many,
to be honest). Given we don’t know the max number, we’re certainly not
sure how often we hit this limit and what happens when the limit is
reached… this is something we’re investigating.

So, that’s a looong post to say… “we’re working on it”,

Peter
Partner-level List Slave

—
NTDEV is sponsored by OSR

For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
http://www.osr.com/seminars

To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at
http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer

—
NTDEV is sponsored by OSR

For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
http://www.osr.com/seminars

To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at
http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer

8

Like today, for example. By my count at least, I’ve received something
like 24 all day, of which 14 posted from 08:00 AM (EST) to 02:30 PM
(EST) or so. In particular, there was nothing between 09:50 AM (EST) to
11:45 AM (EST). I suppose that this could just be today, but it all
seems very strange.

mm

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of Maxim S.
Shatskih
Sent: Wednesday, August 08, 2007 14:29
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: Re: [ntdev] Slow ntdev posting times…

For me, the NNTP posts appear in the newsgroup immediately, but I
get the
email version of the same post much later, sometimes 2-3 hours later.

This occurs only during particular hours of day, around 18-21 GMT.

Maxim Shatskih, Windows DDK MVP
StorageCraft Corporation
xxxxx@storagecraft.com
http://www.storagecraft.com

----- Original Message -----
From: “Martin O’Brien”
To: “Windows System Software Devs Interest List”
Sent: Saturday, August 04, 2007 3:12 AM
Subject: RE: [ntdev] Slow ntdev posting times…

Thanks to both Peter and Scott. Scott, as you suggested, I will contact
you off list with my information.

Thanks,

mm

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of xxxxx@osr.com
Sent: Friday, August 03, 2007 11:07
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: RE:[ntdev] Slow ntdev posting times…

We’re very concerned about posting speed, and have historically worked
very hard to try to ensure posts are processed in “near real time.” We
appreciate the feedback, and rely on the members to let us know when
things aren’t working right. As SNoone mentioned, the best place to
send feedback is xxxxx@osr.com.

Email is still the most common way of participating in the lists (with
the web interface running a close second, since its introduction).

There are several things that will affect the delta between the time you
SEND an email to NTDEV/NTFSD and when that email is delivered:

a) Load on our T1s. We’ve seen exceptionally high loads on our T1s here
at OSR over the past month… We don’t know why. We’re considering a
network configuration change to help balance the line utilization
better.

b) The amount of spam in the mail stream to OSR (and to the world).
Every posting sent to the lists is scanned for spam, viruses, and porn
by a large commercial scanning service. They use a store and forward
system. Here’s an interesting statistic: Overall, we find that about
80% of the email sent to OSR.COM (including lists.OSR.COM) is spam.
This amounts to many thousands of email messages a day. Though the spam
scanning service uses large, redundant, clusters of machines to perform
the scanning, there are times when they get backed-up. Sometimes, the
backups amount to a couple of hours. We agree it’s annoying. We think
getting spam would be more annoying.

c) The load on the list servers - part 1. NTDEV and NTFSD have reached
record levels of membership. It’s not uncommon to see the list server
machine hit 90% CPU utilization at various times during the day. We
don’t think this is a limiting factor in message throughput (it’s
already a rather beefy machine, with dual processors and tons of
memory), but we’re checking into it.

d) The load on the list server – part 2. The number of list members is
so high that we’ve had to upgrade our list server license to accommodate
them. Even with this upgrade, we’re currently license limited to
sending SOME number of emails per hour (we’re not sure exactly how many,
to be honest). Given we don’t know the max number, we’re certainly not
sure how often we hit this limit and what happens when the limit is
reached… this is something we’re investigating.

So, that’s a looong post to say… “we’re working on it”,

Peter
Partner-level List Slave

—
NTDEV is sponsored by OSR

For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
http://www.osr.com/seminars

To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at
http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer

—
NTDEV is sponsored by OSR

For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
http://www.osr.com/seminars

To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at
http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer

—
NTDEV is sponsored by OSR

For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
http://www.osr.com/seminars

To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at
http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer

9

That being said, this one posted in something like five minutes…

mm

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of Martin O’Brien
Sent: Wednesday, August 08, 2007 14:55
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: RE: [ntdev] Slow ntdev posting times…

Like today, for example. By my count at least, I’ve received something
like 24 all day, of which 14 posted from 08:00 AM (EST) to 02:30 PM
(EST) or so. In particular, there was nothing between 09:50 AM (EST) to
11:45 AM (EST). I suppose that this could just be today, but it all
seems very strange.

mm

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of Maxim S.
Shatskih
Sent: Wednesday, August 08, 2007 14:29
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: Re: [ntdev] Slow ntdev posting times…

For me, the NNTP posts appear in the newsgroup immediately, but I
get the
email version of the same post much later, sometimes 2-3 hours later.

This occurs only during particular hours of day, around 18-21 GMT.

Maxim Shatskih, Windows DDK MVP
StorageCraft Corporation
xxxxx@storagecraft.com
http://www.storagecraft.com

----- Original Message -----
From: “Martin O’Brien”
To: “Windows System Software Devs Interest List”
Sent: Saturday, August 04, 2007 3:12 AM
Subject: RE: [ntdev] Slow ntdev posting times…

Thanks to both Peter and Scott. Scott, as you suggested, I will contact
you off list with my information.

Thanks,

mm

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of xxxxx@osr.com
Sent: Friday, August 03, 2007 11:07
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: RE:[ntdev] Slow ntdev posting times…

We’re very concerned about posting speed, and have historically worked
very hard to try to ensure posts are processed in “near real time.” We
appreciate the feedback, and rely on the members to let us know when
things aren’t working right. As SNoone mentioned, the best place to
send feedback is xxxxx@osr.com.

Email is still the most common way of participating in the lists (with
the web interface running a close second, since its introduction).

There are several things that will affect the delta between the time you
SEND an email to NTDEV/NTFSD and when that email is delivered:

a) Load on our T1s. We’ve seen exceptionally high loads on our T1s here
at OSR over the past month… We don’t know why. We’re considering a
network configuration change to help balance the line utilization
better.

b) The amount of spam in the mail stream to OSR (and to the world).
Every posting sent to the lists is scanned for spam, viruses, and porn
by a large commercial scanning service. They use a store and forward
system. Here’s an interesting statistic: Overall, we find that about
80% of the email sent to OSR.COM (including lists.OSR.COM) is spam.
This amounts to many thousands of email messages a day. Though the spam
scanning service uses large, redundant, clusters of machines to perform
the scanning, there are times when they get backed-up. Sometimes, the
backups amount to a couple of hours. We agree it’s annoying. We think
getting spam would be more annoying.

c) The load on the list servers - part 1. NTDEV and NTFSD have reached
record levels of membership. It’s not uncommon to see the list server
machine hit 90% CPU utilization at various times during the day. We
don’t think this is a limiting factor in message throughput (it’s
already a rather beefy machine, with dual processors and tons of
memory), but we’re checking into it.

d) The load on the list server – part 2. The number of list members is
so high that we’ve had to upgrade our list server license to accommodate
them. Even with this upgrade, we’re currently license limited to
sending SOME number of emails per hour (we’re not sure exactly how many,
to be honest). Given we don’t know the max number, we’re certainly not
sure how often we hit this limit and what happens when the limit is
reached… this is something we’re investigating.

So, that’s a looong post to say… “we’re working on it”,

Peter
Partner-level List Slave

—
NTDEV is sponsored by OSR

For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
http://www.osr.com/seminars

To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at
http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer

—
NTDEV is sponsored by OSR

For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
http://www.osr.com/seminars

To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at
http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer

—
NTDEV is sponsored by OSR

For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
http://www.osr.com/seminars

To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at
http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer

—
NTDEV is sponsored by OSR

For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
http://www.osr.com/seminars

To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at
http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer