IP.Chat Completely Unreliable

[Guest]

If you're experiencing errors with entering your chat, please post the error message and error code as well, otherwise we can't debug the problem.

CSTART-0 and CJOIN-0 are both errors we are actively working on at this time.

[Eduardo Bautista]

[#CSTART-3] There was an error connecting with the chat room. Please notify an administrator. 

[Ghosty_CRN]

I can get into my chatroom now, thanks for fixing it. :)

Any updates on an ETA for a 2nd chatroom capability (or multiple rooms), so we can have one public chatroom and one Mod/Admin chatroom? Thanks!

[Fishfish0001]

I can't believe people have repped you for this post, they are obviously as misinformed as yourself. "It will exlode into thousands of errors" - lol.

It seems your browser doesn't recognize the <sarcasm> tag. Maybe you should upgrade it ;)

[reef-face]

Couldn't get into chat for a while error message:

[#CSTART-0] There was an error connecting with the chat room. Please notify an administrator.

Back in now, but for how long. If it was a freebie, fine, but for a paid app to be sooo sketchy, it's not on.

[AtariAge]

My chat room is down, no idea how long it's been down today since I just checked it:

[#CJOIN-5] The room id supplied is invalid. Please notify an administrator.

:(

..Al

[nes718]

From what I understand, you would need a pretty powerful server to run this application on your own. If you had shared hosting your host would very quickly shut your account down due to resource usage, hence it being a hosted only service where you do not have to worry about such resource usage. :)

That might be true on a shared host but those of us with dedicated quad cores can run this app in our sleep. I'm runing Flashcoms, 123flashchat, media servers and .net asp using lots of AJAX on times and my CPU barley pushes %5 at peak. I run my PHP on ISAPI in the IIS subsystem and this app would probably not make much of an impact.

They've already stated they want to charge per connection and is why they are not allowing self hosting of their server app. It has nothing to do with your machine.

[nes718]

PHP allows about 20 concurrent connections at once before all hell breaks loose and it freezes up and breaks. This means, that after about 15 or 20 users join your chat, it will explode into thousands of errors. Also, with that many users, you would be running one hell of a lot of MySQL database queries, which at some point, would explode too.

If PHP were that shoddy Facebook couldn't work. Fact is a well configured machine can handle thousands of connections a second. But yes, your system is using MySQL to post chat messages and you're not pooling your connections or you'll probably reach the max connection limit on MySQL. But then again, a well configured machine will reuse connections.

Definitely misinformed on server configuration there.

[SCGamecock]

At my site, I am currently getting the following:

[#CSTART-0] There was an error connecting with the chat room. Please notify an administrator.

[Rheddy]

I'm getting the same response. Just what the heck is going on with IP.Chat? My community is actually started to get used to using it.

[AtariAge]

It's not even working here. Has anyone opened a ticket yet?

..Al

[Collin S.]

It's not even working here. Has anyone opened a ticket yet?

..Al

Dan stated that they are aware of the issue and working on it.

[AtariAge]

Dan stated that they are aware of the issue and working on it.

Sorry, I thought that was a generic statement that they were investigating those two errors as they occurred. The current "outage" seems to be affecting many (all?) sites and appears to be prolonged at this state.

..Al

[GlobalGreyhounds.com]

We are getting this too:

[#CSTART-0] There was an error connecting with the chat room. Please notify an administrator.

[Depotoir]

[#CSTART-0]

...

It's kinda annoying since my users are paying themselves to use the chatroom and they can't get into it.

Still, I paid myself to upgrade to the 20 live users package. That's bad.

[Charles]

We have addressed this problem and (we think) the root cause. Please continue to let us know if you experience and new issues.

[Guest]

So are we going to blessed with some information now? As all the hush hush is what is really frustrating! :thumbsup:

[Lindy]

So are we going to blessed with some information now? As all the hush hush is what is really frustrating! :thumbsup:

Would you rather us work on the issue or spend our time typing up and providing information? :) I do understand the frustration in terms of information not being forthcoming, but the number one priority at hand was to restore service and stability. Now we have time to share information. :)

I do sincerely apologize for the issues that have plagued the chat service. Please understand it is a new, free to inexpensive service and has experienced growing pains due to popularity. Here's the scoop.... part of these issues have been related to exploding demand, to the point, we couldn't add capacity fast enough to compensate. We've addressed this by migrating to a cloud-based technology that will allow us to quickly scale and deploy additional resources as needed, with minimal impact to end-users. Yesterday's issues were caused by a logging issue. Logs are supposed to be pruned regularly and transferred to the local server for archival. This was not occurring and the logging database server accumulated tens of millions of rows, causing a backlog of queries and the obvious inability for new clients to connect. This has now been resolved and as far as I'm aware, there are no other current chat issues.

To answer other questions:

IPSHosting.net Integration
Yes, that's a good idea. We'll get status updates for the chat services added to that page shortly and hope that we won't need them!

Self-hosted
As has been explained many times, IP.Chat requires a rather complex environment (we're not going to get into the nuts and bolts of it here though.) We designed it specifically for our own environment and put simply, it would absolutely not function on your server(s) without extensive server configuration modifications. To be completely honest, chat was never intended to be nor is it a moneymaker. It's a free or inexpensive chat solution that integrates with your community. We don't feel further development resources to split this to a standalone service is warranted now or in the foreseeable future. If you'd like a self-hosted chatroom, there are plenty available.



If there's any other questions, please do let us know. Again, our apologies for the growing pains -- hopefully we're on our way to stabilizing the system. Thanks for your patience. :)

[Ghosty_CRN]

Thanks for the detailed update Lindy! Can you tell us when you will add capability for a second chatroom? I've asked in another thread, but no answer as of yet. Right now we have all members locked out except Mods/Admins, so this would be an important upgrade to provide our community. Thanks!

[Charles]

Thanks for the detailed update Lindy! Can you tell us when you will add capability for a second chatroom? I've asked in another thread, but no answer as of yet. Right now we have all members locked out except Mods/Admins, so this would be an important upgrade to provide our community. Thanks!

Multiple rooms is on our feature list. It will be available in a future version.

[AtariAge]

Thanks Lindy for the update. I'll keep my eyes on the chat to see how stable it is. :)

..Al

[Guest]

Would you rather us work on the issue or spend our time typing up and providing information? :) I do understand the frustration in terms of information not being forthcoming, but the number one priority at hand was to restore service and stability. Now we have time to share information. :)

I do sincerely apologize for the issues that have plagued the chat service. Please understand it is a new, free to inexpensive service and has experienced growing pains due to popularity. Here's the scoop.... part of these issues have been related to exploding demand, to the point, we couldn't add capacity fast enough to compensate. We've addressed this by migrating to a cloud-based technology that will allow us to quickly scale and deploy additional resources as needed, with minimal impact to end-users. Yesterday's issues were caused by a logging issue. Logs are supposed to be pruned regularly and transferred to the local server for archival. This was not occurring and the logging database server accumulated tens of millions of rows, causing a backlog of queries and the obvious inability for new clients to connect. This has now been resolved and as far as I'm aware, there are no other current chat issues.

To answer other questions:

IPSHosting.net Integration

Yes, that's a good idea. We'll get status updates for the chat services added to that page shortly and hope that we won't need them!

Self-hosted

As has been explained many times, IP.Chat requires a rather complex environment (we're not going to get into the nuts and bolts of it here though.) We designed it specifically for our own environment and put simply, it would absolutely not function on your server(s) without extensive server configuration modifications. To be completely honest, chat was never intended to be nor is it a moneymaker. It's a free or inexpensive chat solution that integrates with your community. We don't feel further development resources to split this to a standalone service is warranted now or in the foreseeable future. If you'd like a self-hosted chatroom, there are plenty available.

If there's any other questions, please do let us know. Again, our apologies for the growing pains -- hopefully we're on our way to stabilizing the system. Thanks for your patience. :)

Hi Lindy!

Thanks for the detailed update as to what is happening - I am sorry if I came across as rude in my earlier reply, I was just frustrated to not know what was going on! :shifty:

[bfarber]

They've already stated they want to charge per connection and is why they are not allowing self hosting of their server app. It has nothing to do with your machine.

I have no idea where you saw or heard this, but no, we don't want to charge per connection. We have a free package that suits a good majority of our customers, and limit-based packages. We do not intend to charge per-connection for IP.Chat.

[Fishfish0001]

If PHP were that shoddy Facebook couldn't work. Fact is a well configured machine can handle thousands of connections a second. But yes, your system is using MySQL to post chat messages and you're not pooling your connections or you'll probably reach the max connection limit on MySQL. But then again, a well configured machine will reuse connections.

Thats on a well configured machine. Take a look at the IPS community. Tons of people here aren't on dedicated machines, and if they are, some aren't masters of using them. You have to consider the point that if IPS releases a product, it needs to work across all types of servers, not just a select few. Also don't forget that people tend to ignore big red x's and warning messages, and will install it even if they can't support it. Also last I recall Facebook and G-Mail use COMET with their chat servers, although that could have changed/been read wrong.

Also all the communities hosted on IPS would be installing this chat, blowing up IPS's servers too. Its not feasible for them to release. Oh and then all the people that have their servers crash, or something happens with that chat, and they are told that their server can't handle it. That wouldn't go over well.

Definitely misinformed on server configuration there.

I wouldn't necessarily say that, but I'm going off what the basic user would understand for a Shared Server/ Weak VPS. At some point on those machines it will stop working, very quickly on most.


Don't get me wrong, you had a great post, but I felt some points were missed. I also wanted to point out that I'm all for them releasing it, but again, fesiablity over want.

[Charles]

Anyone else experiencing issues?