Amazon Search = SLOW

[rodercot]

Hey Guys,

 Is anyone else finding Amazon's db slow to respond. It does not matter what type of serach I enter, could be keyword, title, actor, director. I do try to do this in off peak hours like late late at night or very early in the morning but it seems to make no difference I am still seeing a sometimes a minute and a half for a response sometimes longer. I try to be as specific about the title as I can.

 Dave

[freymann]

Is anyone else finding Amazon's db slow to respond. It does not matter what type of serach I enter, could be keyword, title, actor, director. I do try to do this in off peak hours like late late at night or very early in the morning but it seems to make no difference I am still seeing a sometimes a minute and a half for a response sometimes longer. I try to be as specific about the title as I can.

 Hi Dave.

 No, my Amazon lookups go very fast. I just did a couple searches a few minutes ago. Works like a charm here.

[colinjones]

depending on what search criteria I plug in, it can take upto 20 seconds, often only 10 seconds - but it certainly can be sluggish for some searches

[rodercot]

Colin,

 do you have anything setup for port fowarding in your router to the core. I am wondering if I need to add a port forwarding line for int or http to 80.1 for the core.

 rgds,

 Dave

[colinjones]

no, port forwarding is only for inbound-initiated connections. When a new connection is initiated from the Internet to your public IP address, the router has no way of knowing where to send it without a fixed NAT/PAT/port-forward. Upnp can also provide this these days if the router supports it.

In the case of this type of look up, the connection is initiated from the core outbound. The router NATs this behind it's public IP address with a new source port number. So when traffic returns from Amazon on that connection to that port, the router already knows exactly where to send the traffic and on which TCP connection. No port forward required - in fact port forwards are ignored when processing inbound traffic on extant connections so setting one up wouldn't do anything anyway.

Sorry that isn't it!

[royw]

When the search is really slow, how is your normal internet connection performance?  Maybe run broadband speed tests.  My experience is that the slowdowns were related to ISP/network issues and not amazon.com.

HTH,
Roy

[colinjones]

try speedtest.net it's very good. If you choose a node near you and still get up or down speeds widely varying from your router's sync speed you may have a lot of packet loss or worse your ISP is over subscribing you local DSLAM very heavily. Also, be aware that putting a lot of TCP connections through broadband routers often starves their resources and dramatically impacts performance. This is very easy to do with bittorrent clients if you leave a lot of files seeding.

[rodercot]

Hey Guys,

 Yes I went through this before with setting up torrents and slow dwnld speeds no matter what I tried to do. I am with Bell Sympatico and their ongoing BS to all subscribers. I have been looking for a new provider but for some reason one can give me internet but no phone and another can give me phone but not internet which bites.

 I am an a 5Mb connection and speed test show 1500mb's down on a really good day most of the time it is 950 or so. I complain to the isp but all i get is well your lines are no good in your area. WeLL! Are you not my provider of a service and I am paying you for the service and is it not your infastructure in place - Well fix your $@@#$% infrastructure! The phone lines drop on a regular basis in this area as well. My neighbors were without their phone for 3 days not a month ago.

 I have been holding off on VOIP for this exact reason. If this new company can finally close the deal with Bell then maybe we will get the long awaited line upgrade.

 The norm for me is 2-3 minutes per title when searching amazon from within the system. If I go to Amazon directly and do a search it is instant within 5 seconds anyhow and I can also pull up and surf other sites with no issues while the system is polling Amazon.

 Is the Amazon a hard coded thing or a scraper of some kind. How hard or wha would be the issue with using IMDB. What would have to be done to use imdb I guess is what I am asking, DEVS! now be nice this is just a question. 

 Dave

[royw]

Is the Amazon a hard coded thing or a scraper of some kind. How hard or wha would be the issue with using IMDB. What would have to be done to use imdb I guess is what I am asking, DEVS! now be nice this is just a question. 

Checkout the source, then grep for amazon.  You will notice there are quit a few php files that match.  Looking in them you will notice that they are using amazon's web API (basically exchanging xml fragments over http).  In my quick scan, I didn't see where the search is called on disk insertion, but seem to recall it using the local web server to use the php scripts.

HTH,
Roy

[tschak909]

that's because Amazon isn't used for local disk insertions.

Instead, a media identifier is used, in particular, the External Media Identifier is used.

We do not have source code for this part, it's built privately at pluto, and it uses Windows Media Services to extract metadata.

Compared to the Amazon cover art scan, a lot more metadata is grabbed, in particular: chapter titles, better quality cover art, etc.

-Thom

[royw]

Ah, so it's Windows Media Services I should be blaming for mis-identifying a disk as part of a multi-pack or furnishing an incorrect title. 

I knew the images were coming from WMS, just didn't catch that the meta-data was too.

Thank you for the clarification.

Have fun,
Roy

[rodercot]

Thanks guys,

 It seems to be much better on the re-install from yesterday morning. 10-20 Seconds on Average via Keyword Search.


 rgds.

 Dave