There
are few possible reasons you may experience such slowdowns:
1) Your computer is being backed up.
2) Our network is busy.
3) There is a problem on the Internet
4) The site you're contacting is far.
5) Your web browser is having problems rendering the web page.
6) Your computer may be having other problems.
Discussion
1)
Your computer is being backed up.
When a computer gets backed up by Retrospect it slows down noticeably
giving the overall impression of "slow network" or overall sluggishness.
Backups run at 8pm and normally finish by the next morning so
normally the users don't notice the effect the backup process
may have on their computers. Because the 4th floor is the largest
in terms of the number of computers and the most active in terms
of new files created daily and it keeps on growing, the backups
on 4th floor take longer now, even until early afternoon the next
day. The second largest is the 2nd floor but so far the backups
are done by early morning. Obviously, if you work late at night
you're more likely to experience this slowdown on any floor. When
you notice that your computer suddenly slows down just wait patiently
until you see a message telling you that backup was complete.
I suggest you give it 15 minutes. If you force your computer to
restart you will interrupt the backup sessions and the backup
software will move on to the next computer. There is no way around
this right now.
2)
Our network is busy.
It's possible that during peak hours the network performance,
especially the connection to the outside world through the firewall,
suffers overload problems.
3)
There is a problem on the Internet.
It's very common that there are "traffic" problems somewhere on
the Net. Try connecting to Skirball or main Medical Center pages,
then to some page downtown, then some local New York sites and
finally something far away and you may get the idea. If NYU pages
load quickly the problem lies beyond. Due to the nature of the
Internet, there may be some areas that are difficult to access.
Some sites that you normally visit may load very slowly, fail
altogether or even not respond at all.
4)
The site you're contacting is far.
If you're trying to access pages outside of North America you may
experience slowdowns at any time of the day. It may literally take
few minutes to load a page due to the time required to resolve the
site's IP address and the sheer distance from the server. Try the
above solution to see if local pages load quickly.
5)
Your web browser is having problems rendering the web page.
It's possible that a web page seems slow because your web browser
has difficulties rendering it or encounters a missing image, sound
file or animation it can't handle. Unfortunately, this will happen
with Netscape 4.x on Macintosh most often. Java and animation heavy
pages may even cause older Mac web browsers to fail or crash. If a
page fails to load in Netscape 4.x try to open it with Internet Explorer
5.x or Netscape 7 (avoid Netscape 6). You will find all recent web
browser on Public Stuff on Saturn. There may also be corrupted file
in the cache so empty the cache and restart the browser. 6) Your computer may be having other problems.
It is also possible that your machine is simply having problems. For
example, it may be slow overall with opening programs and files, locking
up and remain unresponsive. If this is the case please email
us for help!
