Very slow response time from server

[davellan]

So my server has had slow response times since I can remember. But recently, the response times are off the charts slow. I timed on a stop watch and it took 25 seconds to load a page, with 20 seconds being "Waiting for MyDomain..."

My sites have very little traffic right now (as I am still developing them), so that isn't the issue.

I have websites in there, all of them use wordpress. Three of them are vanilla WP that I haven't really worked on yet. One of them is nearly complete, has 18 plugins, no caching plugins (my membership plugin developer urged not to use caching for security reasons). I do need all the plugins for my site to function properly.

One of my sites is built from scratch from me as a front end for an API connection I use for other software. It is mostly php.

After having lots of bots attempting to login, I starting working on the server. Beefed up the cpHulk, added firewall, closed all ports, white listed myself, and disabled password auth. Two days ago, I updated my apache to 2.4 from 2.2, updated php from 5.4 to 5.6 through easyApache. Some specs below:

Server Hardware:
Hostgator Standard Dedicated Server:
Intel Xenon 2.5Ghx 4 cores (8 threads)
4GB Ram
Uplink 250 Mbps
1000GB Raid-1 Drive

Server Software:
cPanel Version 11.50.1 (build 3)
Theme paper_lantern
Apache Version 2.4.16
PHP Version 5.6.14
MySQL Version 5.6.23
Architecture x86_64
Operating System linux
Perl Version 5.10.1
Kernel Version 2.6.32-573.7.1.el6.x86_64
Apache/2.4.16 Unix OpenSSL/1.0.1e-fips mod_bwlimited/1.4

Results of a Apache Benchmark compared to an optimized website (wiki.mikejung.biz/WordPress_Optimization)

i.imgur.com/5ayo7rB.jpg

Hostgator has been very unhelpful and I am about ready to jump ship. I am not very skilled at working with servers, so any help is greatly appreciated.

 

[dalem]

does it load slow from another location?
try a simple static site does it load slow?
Do others that visit the sites is it slow for them?
If your server sites are well optimized then start looking at network issues


test your server with some ping,tracroutes ,ipref, benchcheck scripts ,etc
to see if HG is delivering what they promise. HG is not what they once were since EIG took over

 

[Tinu T Thomas]

You can ping to the server IP and make sure that all the packets are receiving to the server to ensure that there is no network related issue.
You can use the below mentioned command for checking it.

========
From local End:
ping -c 5 ServerIP

From Server End you need to execute the below mentioned command.
tcpdump -n -i ServerInterface | grep ICMP | grep YourLocalIP
=========
where;
ServerIP: Its IP of the webserver that you are having issue.
ServerInterface: Its the ServerIP interface that you can get from ifconfig output. eg: eth0, eth1, venet0, venet0:0 etc..
YourLocalIP: You can get it from What Is My IP - The IP Address Experts Since 1999 - WhatIsMyIP.com ®

How to implement this command.

Run the Server End command first from your webserver that you are having issue.
Open a new terminal and run the Local End Command

* Ensure that 10 ICMP packets are received to the server.

If there is no network related issue you can create a info page under the domain that you are facing the issue and check any load issue for the info page.

If you are having any doubt regarding this. Feel free to update.

 

[davellan]

does it load slow from another location?
try a simple static site does it load slow?
Do others that visit the sites is it slow for them?
If your server sites are well optimized then start looking at network issues


test your server with some ping,tracroutes ,ipref, benchcheck scripts ,etc
to see if HG is delivering what they promise. HG is not what they once were since EIG took over

No, it is slow for any one. I guess they are "fixing" it now, and they decided to leave my sites down since last night. I emailed them again about it and just got a response from them saying they fixed the sites. They just brought the sites back online, but the sites are still as slow as molasses. So they "fixed" what they broke trying to fix the original problem. LOL!

HG clearly not at the level it used to be and wouldn't recommend them to my worst enemy.

I just got another server with Liquid Web and moving this server to them ASAP.

 

[davellan]

Well, going with LiquidWeb was a big boost in performance. Load times are now in the 6 second range. Not great, but it is a huge improvement over 20+ seconds I was dealing with before.

New benchmark results:
http://i.imgur.com/ELtDysA.jpg

 

[cPanelMichael]

Well, going with LiquidWeb was a big boost in performance. Load times are now in the 6 second range. Not great, but it is a huge improvement over 20+ seconds I was dealing with before.

Hello

I am happy to see you experienced an improvement. Thank you for providing us with an update.

 

[davellan]

Hello

I am happy to see you experienced an improvement. Thank you for providing us with an update.

Got it down to 4s now. It is just of matter of optimizing code and htaccess files, following the recommendations from gtmetrix.com