My 2 Week Review: My website slows down big time between 7pm and Midnight CT nightly

[Cavemandude]

Here's my review of my HostGator experience so far after two weeks.

Why does my very small website slow down to a snails pace every night between 7pm and Midnight Central Time? This nightly slow down is so bad that it makes my website useless to anyone trying to access it during that time frame.

For example, the link below to one of my pages loads one simple small 575KB FLV video that autoplays. During the day it instantly starts playing but at night or "primetime" it takes up to 30 seconds to load and start playing the only file on this page.

http://www.randywheeler.com/444MEDIA/

My other page below has two FLV videos with embedded players. During the day, after you click Play both videos will completely buffer within a couple seconds and start playing no problem. But at night during "primetime" they will continuously stall out and eventually stop playing altogether because the buffering was way too slow to keep up with the playback.

http://www.randywheeler.com/churchshow/

I am currently on the BabyCroc plan. Did I choose the wrong plan? Anybody else having this problem? How do you fix it?

Thanks,

Randy

[GatorWesley]

Do you have any tickets in with our support department from the times when your site was running slow? All of our plans are on the same multiple OC48 pipeline, so the plan does not affect the speed of your site.

Have you had other people test your site during these hours, or is this all tested at your personal computer?

This isn't really a review about your overall service experience, so I'm moving this to shared hosting.

[Cavemandude]

I've been doing the testing from my computer but I do have pictures links on eBay auctions and other photo-related sites and those also load very slow during these "slow" times but when I load other eBay auctions with many pictures not hosted by eBay but the seller and they have no problems loading quickly. I also test multiple large websites with lots of video, large downloads, pictures to make sure my connection is working properly and that's never been a problem.

I tested my connection speed during my website "slow" times and there is no difference in those speeds when compared during the non "slow" periods of my website files. I'm using a broadband Cox Cable connection which I just tested at 8979 kbps download and 557 kbps upload. These speeds stay consistent 24 hours a day.

But lets look at what I'm trying to do during these nightly slowdowns- Load one file that is only 575KB in size, should that take 30 seconds at my tested connection speeds while I can load other sites with no speed problems? And again that's not the only file I've tested, any file on my website loads very slow during these times.

What could possibly be done via a ticket or anything to change this? I'm sure this type of problem has come up before so what is the usual solution? Just curious before I submit a speeding ticket.

Thanks,

Randy

[codesight]

If you put in a ticket, they can look into the problem directly.

This is "mainly" a peer support forum, where you would come with config/etc... type questions regarding your hosting.

For support, contact them directly.

[Cavemandude]

Submitted my ticket.

Thanks,

Randy

[Serra]

Originally Posted by Cavemandude

Why does my very small website slow down to a snails pace every night between 7pm and Midnight Central Time? This nightly slow down is so bad that it makes my website useless to anyone trying to access it during that time frame.

I'd monitor the CPU usage during that time and a little away from that time and see if the CPU is spiking. If not, the problem is likely a network issue, not a server issue.