I think I have the apache/tcp config in some kind of working order so that we won't suffer such wild dips like we had over the past couple of days. These pains were brought on by a confluence of three minor events: running out of work to send, waiting an extra precious day before enacting the database compression/backup, and reducing our backend to just one download server. You'd think the last item was the main culprit as we seemingly slashed our server capacity by 50%, but the real bottleneck is still the router (the new one still not config'ed yet - waiting on a new IOS image). The single download server (bane) can handle the traffic, but the apache config was such that when all the downloads started it the cpu load went up to 400. Basically, MaxClients was set way too high but this went unnoticed when only half the load was on vader and half on bane. Then I set MaxClients too low - we were dropping connections long before hitting other theoretical limits. Now MaxClients is set just right. Or right enough for now. We're still experiencing catch up "malaise" but it's a much smoother ride in general than yesterday.

I've actually been working on some scientific programming. With the new science indexes being built we're able to analyze some data to get an idea of the current RFI structure. Basically we're seeing the radar noise in the final data - the radar blanking signals are still being implemented so new data (once it finally starts coming in) should be far less noisy. I'm hoping this kind of work will inspire more scientific updates from the others (remember: I'm a math/computer geek, not an astronomer - everything I know about SETI/astronomy is from 10+ years of osmosis working here at the lab).

- Matt

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-- BOINC/SETI@home network/web/science/development person
-- "Any idiot can have a good idea. What is hard is to do it." - Jeanne-Claude

Thank You Matt . . .

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BOINC Wiki . . .

Science Status Page . . .

Thank you Good news is always welcome. Good luck and hoping you get it the way you want it.

Well everything sure seems to be snortin' along at a fine pace right now.....
Hope the changes hold!!

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"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster