Extremely slow server

But it's fast via proxy

[gcan]

I got a server in another country. The problem is that from time to time all websites hosted on this server work extremaly slow. Sometimes I need 1-2 minutes to open a website. Sometimes I can't open any websites for 1-2 hours.

The server is not overloaded and the strangest thing is that all websites via proxy I can open very fast. Other people in diferent countries say the server is working fast.

The same problem happends with all servers located in that data centre but not with servers which are located in the same city but in a different data centre.

Any ideas what may cause such a problem?

My ISP? Data center where the server is located?

I have tracerouted many times, but I don't understand the results. I am in Spainish islands and my server is located in another European country. Traceroute includes 2 US addresses:
64.212.107.113
208.48.188.194
Is this normal?

Today ping is about 230-240 ms. Other servers in the same city: 120-130 ms.

A few years ago I had 2 servers in 2 datacenters in Germany. I had the same problem with one of the servers.

I am getting crazy! I need 3-4 hours to download a 190 MB file from my server.

Maybe is there some diagnostic tool which can help to find the problem? Any help will be appreciated.

[engine]

If you're on an island, that may be the problem. The sites may be operating fine to the rest of the world, it's just the traffic to your island may be the bottleneck.

[gcan]

engine, thank you for your reply.

But if it's an island problem, how can you explain that the problem is only with one data centre. All servers which are located in the same city but another data centers are responding fast.

[gcan]

strange...

This is a part from traceroute results to my server:

5 103 ms 108 ms 106 ms Xe11-0-0-0-grtpartv2.red.telefonica wholesale.net [84.16.13.166]
6 105 ms 102 ms 104 ms 64.212.107.113
7 146 ms 144 ms 151 ms 208.48.188.194

And this is a part of traceroute results to another server in the same city but in another data centre:

6 169 ms 78 ms 84 ms Tsystem-6-1-1-0-grtmadpe3.red.telefonica-wholesale.net [213.140.52.90]
7 137 ms 143 ms 135 ms 217.239.39.254
8 158 ms 158 ms 149 ms 217.243.219.118

As you can see in the first example, the route goes via USA (Ip addresses 64.212.107.113 and 208.48.188.194). In the second example the route from my ISP goes straight to the Germany. IP addresses 217.239.39.254 and 217.243.219.118.

I am right? If yes, my question is - why the route from my computer in Europe to a server in Europe goes via USA? I don't know a lot about it. Is it a fault of my ISP?

Thanks.

[gcan]

Anyone?

[gcan]

Hello,

I donīt believe that noone knows how Internet works and why the traceroute from Europe to Europe goes via USA.

Noone knows who creates the route from my computer to the server? Is it my ISP?

Itīs a real horror - I spent more than 3 hours saving 200 mb file. Itīs saved only for 44%.

[JS_Harris]

Visit your site through a proxy, if it's fast via proxy but not directly from your location the slowdown is caused by the hosting company (most likely improper redirects or configuration but it might also be intentional throttling to some ISP ranges).

[lammert]

What you see is caused by the loose networking structure of the Internet. A good ISP has more than one connection to the outside world. If one of the connections fails, the routers of the ISP will automatically try to reroute the connections over the other available connections. Therefore the whole routing structure is not fixed, but is based on algorithms which use regularly updated tables and parameters like current bandwidth usage on each connection and errors/delays/outages encountered on the connections to decide which route to take for each packet.

It seems that your ISP has a connection directly with Europe mainland and one with the US. Which of the connections is used if you want to visit a website is based on the outcome of the routing algorithm. Probably the router algorithm calculates that the IP range of your server in mainland Europe can be best reached via the US connection. Although you know that it isn't the best connection, the router doesn't and forwards your request to their peering partner in the US.

As you are on a Spanish island, I expect the connection to Europe mainland to have a much higher bandwidth than the connection to the US. There may be even bandwidth throttling going on on that line to divide the available bandwidth evenly over many customers. I wouldn't be surprised if the connection with mainland Europe is also much cheaper for the ISP in terms of EUR/gigabyte than the US connection and that they deliberately throttle all traffic through the US pipe just to keep their costs low.

[gcan]

Thank you very much for your very informative answers.

One more strange thing which I have noticed... My data center's website is never slow. My server and data center's own web server are in the same IP address range, but tracerout results are different.

And one more time - my server is not overloaded. When problems happen all servers in this DC are hardly accessible except the data centers own web server.