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Thanks for reading my question.

I've been having a strange problem with Apache 2.4 on my dedicated Windows Server 2008 machine (8 gigs of RAM, Intel Xeon E3-1220 3.1GHz, 1 gig link). For some reason whenever I load my site (or any static file from my site such as an image) in Firefox (32.0.3 or Nightly) I get long waiting times before the image files begin to transfer. These times range from 5.5 seconds to almost exactly 6 seconds.

I can rectify this on my machine (or the others I've tested on which are outside this network) but changing the network.http.max-connections variable in about:config to anything under 10; anything above and it will once again slow down. Strangely enough this doesn't seem to happen at all in Chrome or IE which takes from 300-800ms.

I did not experience these problems until about a week ago, before which I was getting around 180ms on an empty cache for the index page. The only changes I can recall making are in the conf file for optimisation.

Stuff I've tried:

  • Reset to the default Apache conf file
  • Redownloaded Apache from Apache Lounge and then Apache Haus
  • Enabling/disabling KeepAlive (currently on)
  • Lowering the KeepAliveTimout value (currenty at 3)
  • Enabling/disabling mpm_winnt
  • Moving the site files and Apache to different disks
  • Disabling the firewall
  • Checking the disk's SMART status and running a sector scan (all fine)
  • Watching Resource Monitor for any spikes in disk/CPU/RAM usage
  • Using Procmon to watch for anything that stands out
  • Testing download / upload speeds on the server which are very fast
  • Rebooting (getting desperate)
  • Tried using Firefox 3.6.28 - works perfectly!

One of my friends also has a dedicated server with the same provider I am using. His server does not suffer from this problem. The only difference I can see is that he's running Apache 2.2. I'm going to try with 2.2 in a bit and report back.

I'm pulling what little hair I have out on this one. I've scoured this site and have seen some people with similar problems, but their solutions do not work for me. Has anyone got any ideas?

Here are the timings: http://i.stack.imgur.com/ME1Ju.jpg

Thanks again.

Edit - It's actually more like 4/5 page loads that experience this. 1/5 requests take around 300ms... Edit 2 - Added Firefox 3.6.28 test results

Sin
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  • Have you tried this with an earlier version of FF - are you sure this isn't somehow a client side issue ? https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/ – user9517 Oct 08 '14 at 11:41
  • Hi, thanks for your comment. I have tried with both the latest release version and the latest Nightly version. I've also tried on a machine outside of our network which experiences the same problem. – Sin Oct 08 '14 at 11:43
  • I think you need to try this with an earlier version to try to rule out a client side issue. – user9517 Oct 08 '14 at 11:45
  • @Iain You're right, Firefox 3.6.28 loads the site in around 200-300 ms every time. Any ideas why the latest version suffers from the slow down, and only on my site? As I mentioned, my friend has a server on the same provider but does not suffer from this. Thanks again. – Sin Oct 08 '14 at 11:57
  • Not sure why this was down voted. – Sin Oct 09 '14 at 07:47

1 Answers1

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Solved! This page here contained the answer: https://superuser.com/questions/516030/apache-2-4-on-windows-responds-slowly-hangs-when-serving-some-dynamic-pages

I had to use 

AcceptFilter http none

in my conf file. I do not use the firewall they do but it seems to have fixed my issue.

Community
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Sin
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