Server Priority Problem-slowdown

[mkrubsack]

I have several servers set up in order, 1, 2, 3 etc. If server 1 does not have the article, I get a server error Failed 430 No Such Article. Then Newsbin rolls over to server 2, it has the article and begins to download it.

The issue I am experiencing is that all servers when in server priority number 1, I get about 300 Mbps download. Once server 1 fails and server 2 picks up the speed drops to about 125 Mpbs. If I go into the servers tab and change the order of 1 to say 10, and move server 2 up to 1, then my speed picks up to the 300 Mbps. This seems to be reproducible if I use NewsDemon and/or Usenet.Farm. Ether one will max out my connection as server #1, but if it fails there and server 2 kicks in then my speed goes to pot. It seems with multiple servers, whichever one is in slot 1 has a faster speed. I wonder why?

I am using 6.80RC5 Build 5042.

[Quade]

Are the other servers metered? The other servers don't do anything until there's an error but it means you'll always have a delay between the lower priority server trying and then higher priority server trying. If the other servers aren't metered, you might want to set them to the same priority so there's no delays while downloading. I suspect it's the "check the lower priority server first" delay which reduces your download speed.

What I'm suggesting is you set all flat-fee servers to the same priority and only set the metered servers, that cost extra, to a higher priority.

[mkrubsack]

No, none metered. I will put them all the same priority ( 1 ) as suggested and see what happens. (I have one block account which is always a lower priority and seldom used, and not part of this issue.)

Followup. FYI. With three servers selected as priority 1, slow download if one server returns 430 No Such Article. If I reduce said offending server to priority 2 or lower, the priority 1 servers speed up to max out my connection. Seems like any server that returns No Such Article on my end will not let the others gallop at full throttle. Once I remove the offending server, then it's off to the races. Since I don't do any automated downloading, i can monitor the speed progress indicator and logging tab and make the change on the fly.

[Quade]

Seems like any server that returns No Such Article on my end will not let the others gallop at full throttle

As I understand it, typically it takes a server longer to process a 430 than it does to process a record it knows about. So, I wonder if a 430 is simply taking longer to declare a failure?

I'll think about whether there's some way to work around a slow 430 response.

[mkrubsack]

I did notice that for a 430 error Newsbin will keep generating error messages, for a 5GB file, I will easily see 3,000+ errors. Would this contribute to the slowdown? Perhaps after a few 430's Newsbin would ignore that server and stop trying to retrieve from it. What happens is that Newsbin keeps generating the error messages until I demote that server.