carvano said:
Glad to see I'm not alone in this, if not sad for the situation. I thought it was my internet being slow but other sites have been fine. Both desktop and mobile. I tested to see if my mobile data would make it better and it does work fine with that. But wifi connection has fast up and downloads. So it's either my ISP throttling the site for some reason or something with the site itself.

Edit: Forgot to mention that I use chrome on both desktop and mobile.

Update since my previous comment.

It seems as if things have gone back to normal. Pictures load fully without delay, videos don't buffer anymore and things just seem to be fine now. Tried it on mobile, same thing. Take what I say with a grain of salt.

carvano said:
Update since my previous comment.

It seems as if things have gone back to normal. Pictures load fully without delay, videos don't buffer anymore and things just seem to be fine now. Tried it on mobile, same thing. Take what I say with a grain of salt.

Came back to say the same thing, on desktop and downloads are nigh instant again :) good shit to whoever put in work to solve it

Loading is still extremely slow for me.

jerdude002 said:
Came back to say the same thing, on desktop and downloads are nigh instant again :) good shit to whoever put in work to solve it

It flip-flops for me. Sometimes it'll load lickity-split, others it'll bog down like 90s dial-up.

All of these are most likely regional slowdowns (especially outside the US or Europe), temporary high server traffic (as in browsing during peak hours), your ISP/VPN doing wacky things behind-the-scenes, your browser/PC doing wacky things behind-the-scenes, or any combination of the above.

I'm surprised not a lot of people are sharing potential solutions. Things you could try:

• Changing your browser, device, or internet connection to see if it is a local issue.
• Changing your "Default image width" in your Settings to show you smaller samples.

One thing that worked for me (since I do experience slow load times, but not very severely):

• Posting the e621 links on Discord and viewing it as an embed there. Works oddly well for video posts.
• Use JDownloader 2 to download posts with large file sizes.

I finally have some good news.
My ISP sent a techie to my house today to check what was wrong. To begin with, my internet package is so old that they don't even sell it anymore, only 100mb, a old 2 antenna router and I had it since before my ISP changed their brand name... In other words, my connection was very obsolete.

The first thing the techie did was replacing my old router with a new one with 4 antennas, then he boosted my connection to 200mb, everything without price alterations... I came looking for copper and I've found gold :V

So far e621 is working perfectly, images and videos are loading instantly at full resolution without lag or buffering, and thx to RE621 even the gif thumbnails are loading and playing without issues.

Conclusion: At least on my end my problem was my ISP. Now I just hope I'm not saying it too soon.

qwazzy said:
Seems to be intermittent. Last few days I noticed it, images and videos would take multiple minutes to load. Tonight, they loaded in just a couple seconds.

I'm probably gonna blame it internally on the ol' ISP since they're no stranger to bad decisions, though it could be a number of things.

Surprise seeing you here! Hey there, bre-butt.
The issue (at least for the moment) seems to have resolved itself, but I'm still holding my breath.

site performance seems to semi-fine for me now? its definitely better than it was before but i feel like its not quite 100%? not sure tho.

thegreatwolfgang said:
All of these are most likely regional slowdowns (especially outside the US or Europe), temporary high server traffic (as in browsing during peak hours), your ISP/VPN doing wacky things behind-the-scenes, your browser/PC doing wacky things behind-the-scenes, or any combination of the above.

Then why does it happen for ONLY e621, and nothing else?

It's still extremely slow for me, even slower than last time I commented on here. It is just getting worse. No VPN.
I tried manually setting googles DNS just in case it was a DNS Problem. Did not help either.

nevermind what I said on my last comment, site's still slow even after increasing connection speed and using a better router
whatever it is, it doesn't seem to be client sided

one thing I noticed is that if I close the browser after cleaning cache it might load e621 faster for a few minutes but after that it'll get slow again and you'll have to repeat the process...
ffs do admins ever check the forums? it's impossible that so many users are having issues and they don't say anything

berk_rider said:
nevermind what I said on my last comment, site's still slow even after increasing connection speed and using a better router
whatever it is, it doesn't seem to be client sided

one thing I noticed is that if I close the browser after cleaning cache it might load e621 faster for a few minutes but after that it'll get slow again and you'll have to repeat the process...
ffs do admins ever check the forums? it's impossible that so many users are having issues and they don't say anything

The issues appear resolved on this end, it might be that there was a memory leak issue with prior versions of browsers when using the site, is my only guess. Try completely killing your browser, and check to see if there's an update for it?

berk_rider said:
nevermind what I said on my last comment, site's still slow even after increasing connection speed and using a better router
whatever it is, it doesn't seem to be client sided

one thing I noticed is that if I close the browser after cleaning cache it might load e621 faster for a few minutes but after that it'll get slow again and you'll have to repeat the process...
ffs do admins ever check the forums? it's impossible that so many users are having issues and they don't say anything

I like your funny words, magic man

seriously though, I'm on laptop (laugh all you want) and simply updating it fixed all the problems.

protox3alt said:
I like your funny words, magic man

seriously though, I'm on laptop (laugh all you want) and simply updating it fixed all the problems.

just updated my opera gx manually... site still slow

Actually about memory leak...have you tried to check your RAM?
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/do-more-with-surface/how-to-use-windows-memory-diagnostic

Funnily enough, the site was working for me fine yesterday but it is back to being sluggish today. Yesterday all the thumbnails loaded nearly instantly and videos were playing without buffering even when set to fit horizontal.
Today, thumbnails take quite some time to load and videos in 480p are buffering about every 10 seconds.
I'm staying with my family over the holidays so I use a different ISP to connect to here. Since the behaviour is the same it doesn't seem to be ISP related. The fact that it worked perfectly fine yesterday (being here at basically the same time as usual, so traffic can also be ruled out) also indicates to me that it isn't related to either my browser or device.
I guess it is something with the information being sent when connecting to the site/cloudflare that causes this slowdown.

berk_rider said:
just updated my opera gx manually... site still slow

Oh, I meant updating my laptop, not Opera.
E6 is running kind of slow today too, but it is Christmas night, so traffic might be high. (or the other way around)

So basically, after a month, the site been sluggish a bit. When I initially get on here, it works pretty ok for about a few seconds. Then images start loading in like I am using Dial-up Connection and what not. I use Brave so I decided to switch to firefox. still same thing. Sometimes it worked well past few days but then it went back to sluggish. There were no posts on updates or maintenance for what I seen. So my educated guess? Someone decided to tinker with the code server side to improve something but mess something up in the process. They are actively trying to work on it, thus why sometimes it works. Either this or they are updating their systems but didnt tell us about it. This is my guess though so take it with a grain of salt. If any case. We can only wait until it is fixed. I can say for certain this isnt anyones internet or connection speed. its on their end.

definitlynotwinter69 said:
site performance seems to semi-fine for me now? its definitely better than it was before but i feel like its not quite 100%? not sure tho.

The issue resolved itself for me around the time this was posted and performance was great again, but it started up last night and is back to being unusable. Same experience as before, thumbnails load one by one and a full page takes over a minute usually and single images take minutes to load, assuming they even finish loading at all. Nothing at all has changed on my end at any point; no updates to my browser or to Windows, same issue across multiple browsers and multiple machines, router and internet connection are all stable and everything else works perfectly.

it's been over a month already and everything's still too slow for me
there are times I open the site and it's already struggling to load the thumbnails, sometimes everything works for about 2 minutes then it starts to take forever to load anything

my PC had a issue on new year's eve so I took it to a techie, during the tests I also told him about the issue with e621
I told him the site works if I use mobile data on my phone but not if I use wifi or connect my pc directly to the router with a cable which's the best connection
according to him, since the site works on mobile data then it's not a issue from the site or its server but from my internet provider instead, otherwise even mobile data wouldn't work and it's not a device issue because it's very unlikely that both pc and phone are having the same issue

I'll try to contact my internet provider again tomorrow and see if they can fix it

berk_rider said:
it's been over a month already and everything's still too slow for me
there are times I open the site and it's already struggling to load the thumbnails, sometimes everything works for about 2 minutes then it starts to take forever to load anything

my PC had a issue on new year's eve so I took it to a techie, during the tests I also told him about the issue with e621
I told him the site works if I use mobile data on my phone but not if I use wifi or connect my pc directly to the router with a cable which's the best connection
according to him, since the site works on mobile data then it's not a issue from the site or its server but from my internet provider instead, otherwise even mobile data wouldn't work and it's not a device issue because it's very unlikely that both pc and phone are having the same issue

I'll try to contact my internet provider again tomorrow and see if they can fix it

I personally still have issues where images are loading in chunks like it's 2002.

ok now I'm 100% sure it's not my internet connection, provider or device...
- tried accessing with 2 different pcs
- tried accessing with phone
- tried using 2 different wifi connections
- tried using 2 different cable connections
- tried using mobile data
- tried asking provider/techie to reset my router configs and dns
- tried manually adding a dns since I never had one so it's always been set to auto
- tried disabling all extensions
- tried different browsers
- tried using ipconfig /flushdns
- tried using vpn
- tried disabling antivirus
and god knows what else more I've tried... site is still randomly getting too damn slow to the point 10 seconds videos, small images and even thumbnails takes minutes to load

conclusion: it's a site issue and gotta contact staff to fix it

berk_rider said:
conclusion: it's a site issue and gotta contact staff to fix it

> 99% of site staff: *working voluntarily without any access to the hardware* 🗄🗄🤷🗄🗄
> The 1% of site staff with physical access to the servers: 🔥🔥🤷☕️🔥
> The server and site owner: "last online - 10 years ago" 😴In all seriousness though, it is most probably regional slowdown as some people do not have any problems at all while some others do.
IIRC as well, e621 does not have their own dedicated server and is piggybacking off the resources of Bad Dragon's servers, alongside FurryNetwork and F-list.

EDIT: My info is very much outdated, see forum #435779 for official clarification.

berk_rider said:
ok now I'm 100% sure it's not my internet connection, provider or device...
- tried accessing with 2 different pcs
- tried accessing with phone
- tried using 2 different wifi connections
- tried using 2 different cable connections
- tried using mobile data
- tried asking provider/techie to reset my router configs and dns
- tried manually adding a dns since I never had one so it's always been set to auto
- tried disabling all extensions
- tried different browsers
- tried using ipconfig /flushdns
- tried using vpn
- tried disabling antivirus
and god knows what else more I've tried... site is still randomly getting too damn slow to the point 10 seconds videos, small images and even thumbnails takes minutes to load

conclusion: it's a site issue and gotta contact staff to fix it

Used to be the same for me, but then one day (after a few weeks of trying every fix possible) everything randomly came back to normal, and i have no issues ever since.

abecedeef said:
Used to be the same for me, but then one day (after a few weeks of trying every fix possible) everything randomly came back to normal, and i have no issues ever since.

been about (if not over) a month already for me, for most sites this kind of issue tends to fix in only a few days... I just don't understand why so many other users according to this thread are also having the same issue and staff haven't said a word yet

thegreatwolfgang said:
> 99% of site staff: *working voluntarily without any access to the hardware* 🗄🗄🤷🗄🗄
> The 1% of site staff with physical access to the servers: 🔥🔥🤷☕️🔥
> The server and site owner: "last online - 10 years ago" 😴

In all seriousness though, it is most probably regional slowdown as some people do not have any problems at all while some others do.
IIRC as well, e621 does not have their own dedicated server and is piggybacking off the resources of Bad Dragon's servers, alongside FurryNetwork and F-list.

F... guess all we can do is wait then

Clarification on e621 Hosting and Performance

We’d like to provide some clarity regarding how e621 is hosted and address concerns about site performance.
---

• Dedicated Hosting in the U.S.:

e621 operates on its own dedicated servers, all hosted in the United States, specifically in Arizona. Due to the site’s growth, we now run on seven dedicated servers to handle its demands.

• Separate Hosting for F-List:

While F-List shares the same data center as e621, it operates on its own dedicated servers entirely separate from e621.

• Other Sites’ Hosting Locations:

Bad Dragon and Furry Network are hosted in different locations and are not connected to e621’s infrastructure.

• Access to Hardware:

NotMeNotYou does not have physical access to any of the hardware hosting e621.

• High-Performance Static Content Server:

Our static content server, responsible for hosting images, videos, and other files, is equipped with a 40-gigabit fiber connection and the fastest SSDs available. This server was recently upgraded with new CPUs, faster RAM, and improved SSDs to meet growing site demand. At present, it has no known performance bottlenecks.

• Proactive Monitoring and Alerts:

We have detailed monitoring systems in place to track server health and network performance. Alerts are configured to notify the responsible staff promptly in case of any issues. The servers and their outbound network connections are performing as expected without any known problems.

• Overprovisioning for Reliability:

e621’s infrastructure is deliberately overprovisioned, with all servers allocated at least double the resources required for their tasks. This ensures smooth operation during peak demand and helps handle unexpected traffic surges, including the frequent DDoS attacks the site experiences.
---
If you’re encountering performance issues, these are likely regional. Connections from locations far from Arizona may experience latency due to the need to pass through multiple networks, and any one of those networks might be encountering issues. Additionally, users in countries with restrictive policies on pornography may face intentional rate-limiting by local ISPs.

We hope this information helps clarify the situation. Thank you for your understanding and continued support.

hal_greaves said:

Clarification on e621 Hosting and Performance

We’d like to provide some clarity regarding how e621 is hosted and address concerns about site performance.
---

• Dedicated Hosting in the U.S.:

e621 operates on its own dedicated servers, all hosted in the United States, specifically in Arizona. Due to the site’s growth, we now run on seven dedicated servers to handle its demands.

• Separate Hosting for F-List:

While F-List shares the same data center as e621, it operates on its own dedicated servers entirely separate from e621.

• Other Sites’ Hosting Locations:

Bad Dragon and Furry Network are hosted in different locations and are not connected to e621’s infrastructure.

• Access to Hardware:

NotMeNotYou does not have physical access to any of the hardware hosting e621.

• High-Performance Static Content Server:

Our static content server, responsible for hosting images, videos, and other files, is equipped with a 40-gigabit fiber connection and the fastest SSDs available. This server was recently upgraded with new CPUs, faster RAM, and improved SSDs to meet growing site demand. At present, it has no known performance bottlenecks.

• Proactive Monitoring and Alerts:

We have detailed monitoring systems in place to track server health and network performance. Alerts are configured to notify the responsible staff promptly in case of any issues. The servers and their outbound network connections are performing as expected without any known problems.

• Overprovisioning for Reliability:

e621’s infrastructure is deliberately overprovisioned, with all servers allocated at least double the resources required for their tasks. This ensures smooth operation during peak demand and helps handle unexpected traffic surges, including the frequent DDoS attacks the site experiences.
---
If you’re encountering performance issues, these are likely regional. Connections from locations far from Arizona may experience latency due to the need to pass through multiple networks, and any one of those networks might be encountering issues. Additionally, users in countries with restrictive policies on pornography may face intentional rate-limiting by local ISPs.

We hope this information helps clarify the situation. Thank you for your understanding and continued support.

is there a way to check if my country is having these regional performance issues? 'cuz honestly I feel like I'm missing a ton of new content just because the site doesn't load anything correctly

3 months passed and the issue still persists... but now I know it's not e621 fault...
with the exception of very known websites like facebook, google, twitter, instagram, youtube, etc basically EVERY other website I access is taking forever to load videos and images
e612, rule 34 phareal and xxx, furaffinity... hell even nhentai is taking forever to load covers and even more to load pages
this isn't happening only with websites outside of brazil, some local websties are also too damn slow

like I said before, I tested it in multiple devices and my house has 3 internet connections counting with mobile data... I really don't believe all devices and connections I've tested got issues coming from my end, but if that's right then wtf is going on???

edit: I'm testing proton vpn rn, so far so good everything's loading (funny that I tested vpn before and I still had issues) but still I wonder what's happening...

For about 3 or so days i've been having major issues with loading things on this websites, anything from images to GIF's or WEBM's. It is to the point images load in chunks every few seconds and it takes between 10 to 30 seconds to load a frame of a GIF or video.

Any other website i go to is loading just fine. What the hell is going on?

Big problems in loading anything image related today, something's really wrong

lewidio said:
Big problems in loading anything image related today, something's really wrong

Yep. It was working fine, but about 15-20 minutes ago on my end it just...can't load any image.

lewidio said:
Big problems in loading anything image related today, something's really wrong

I can’t even load the site normally, I had to use a proxy site.

Bloody hell 2999 ms for a ping in the image server.

Cloudflare looks like it's on the fritz. Might be a combination of minor issues at the data centre and cloudflare compounding into a bigger problem?

Seems like everything’s back up and working, at least on my end. That was weird.

dasbaphomet said:
The Site only loads slow when signed in for me, I use Chrome and also tried Opera, and when signed in to my e621 account, it loads content very slow, but signing out of my account on either browser makes things load instantly. Anyone else experiencing it this way?

I had a similar experience for a little while, but it seems a bit random. When signed in, absolutely everything is loading with less than 100KB/s. Thumbnails, resized images, full images, downloads, all the same.

But when I opened an incognito window without login and load the site, everything loaded within seconds and at 2.2 MB/s. Then, like 30 seconds later speeds slowed to a crawl again. It's as if the site took a few seconds to remember that I should be throttled before it kicked in.

Could this perhaps be the result of an overly zealous rate limiting function or something? e926.net seems to work fine.

It's often very slow these days. Considering that it is regional, could this be some kind of DOS-attack on e621 through Cloudflare data centers?

fixed by changing my internet provider... turns out e621 wasn't the only website I was having issues with

with my previous provider, arquive downloads of 10mb would take 4 ESTIMATED DAYS to download, images would open after loading pixel line by pixel line and 2 seconds videos would take 20 minutes to load completely... that in any website I'd visit
techie said if it was internet throttling then fast.com and speedtest.net would't state my connection at full speed for both up and down, but surely there was some kind of block that I only got it fixed after changing my provider