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Slow Mac Mini Webserver

My website has a lousy speed when accessed from outside my network, but it is lightning fast when accessed on my private network behind the router. That makes me think that the router settings could be a problem.


Site was built in iWeb and is hosted on my Mac mini


I have this setup in this specific order:

  • Comcast Cable modem
    • Docsis 3
    • Speedtest.net yields 10ms ping, 25M downlink and 4.5M uplink
  • Cisco UMA200 VoIP single port router for my T-Mobile IP phone
    • port 80 forwarding is turned on
    • AirPort Extreme is hardwired to it and DHCP is used to assign IP to AirPort behind it
  • Airport Extreme N-version
    • Port 80 forwarding is turned on
    • Using DHCP and each device has reserved IP based on its MAC address
    • Mac Mini, SSD, 5GB RAM - hardwired into Airport Extreme
    • Apple TV 2 = hardwired into Airport Extreme, reserved private IP
    • iPod - Wifi into Airport Extreme - reserved private IP
    • Macbook - Wifi into Airport Extreme - reserved private IP
  • I use DynDNS as my domain provider for my dynamic IP
  • I modified the httpd.conf file to point to my User/Sites folder where iWeb dupms the files - works great


Questions:


  • Why is the speed of this site so fast behind the router and why is it so slow outside the router?
    http://krecek.homeunix.com
    Pictures load slowly and sometimes they don't load all the way
  • Should I do manual private IP assignment as opposed to DHCP???
  • Should I start using port 8080 as opposed to 80?
  • Any suggestions or experience would be welcome! Thanks!

Mac mini, Mac OS X (10.7.3), C2D 2GHz, 5GB RAM, SSD

Posted on Mar 1, 2012 10:16 PM

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Posted on Mar 2, 2012 2:53 PM

Why is the speed of this site so fast behind the router and why is it so slow outside the router?

Bottom line? Your upload speed of 4.5 Mbps is the main bottleneck for remote users accessing webpages from your web server. I would recommend that you talk to your ISP to see if upgrading to business-grade level of service would improve this significantly. Typically, this level of service provides three things: 1) Matched download & upload rates, 2) A static Public IP address, and 3) Better service up-time.

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Mar 2, 2012 2:53 PM in response to Jiri Krecek

Why is the speed of this site so fast behind the router and why is it so slow outside the router?

Bottom line? Your upload speed of 4.5 Mbps is the main bottleneck for remote users accessing webpages from your web server. I would recommend that you talk to your ISP to see if upgrading to business-grade level of service would improve this significantly. Typically, this level of service provides three things: 1) Matched download & upload rates, 2) A static Public IP address, and 3) Better service up-time.

Mar 2, 2012 7:15 PM in response to Jiri Krecek

When you are in your own LAN you have a 100mbps connection people from the outside world are sharing a louzy uplink connection from you ISP. If you have more than one machine on your network sending and reciving data that connection is then split between them all at the time of the transmission, or if you have multiple users loggin in to your website over the web then they have to share your uplink connecton as well.


SOLUTION:


Get your Mac Mini Hosted with a Mac hosting provider such as www.hostingmacmini.com.au if you are in Australis or Mac Mini Colo if you are in the US www.macminicolo.net


These guys do this for a living for people that want to have their own servers running on a Mac Mini you will notice a MASSIVE change in your website access...


In addition they can provide you a much better security both Physically and Through Hardware firewalls.


Good Luck


🙂

Mar 3, 2012 6:32 AM in response to Tesserax

Thanks, Tesserax!!!

Very helpful, as always. I kinda realized that the 4Mbit uplink was not stellar for a webhost. I guess I had had better, yet unrealistic, hopes.


I probably should have structured my question differently:

Apart from the uplink speed, is there anything I could do on my Airport or Mac to speed things up?

  • Would manual private IP assignment as opposed to DHCP make difference?
  • Would geting second Airport help?
    Right now, I have Extreme with 2 hardwired devices and a couple wifi ones
    What If I had two devices hardwired into the first Extreme: the Mini and a second Extreme, and the rest of devices would be on the second Extreme? Would that improve speed somewhat?
  • Is there anything else on my end what could be improved or set up differently?


What is still puzzling me is the fact that when loading the site from outside, not only is it slow (takes about 3-5 sec to load a page), but sometimes select pictures do not load and only red x appears. That one, I've never figured out.


I'll definitely look into Comcast's offerings for better uplink speeds.

As I said to Hardy, I'm hoping not to have to change the domain name again as DynDNS won't let me forward to an outside host while using their free domain name.

Mar 3, 2012 6:52 AM in response to Jiri Krecek

Hi jiri


With regards to the speed the only thing you can do is copress your html files and images. In your meta data allow the pages to be cached. Make sure you have minimum amount of html, css and java script codes in your site.


The other option is to have your router allocation/priority bandwidth to your Mac minis ip address. I.e you limit connection speed for all your other devices except the mac mini... Not all routers can do that so you may need to do a bit of research in that area.


As for the image being just a red cross could be Becuse of the request sestion timeout due to slow connections. Do you want to publish your domain so i can have a look and run some tests for you see what i fine... I.e use FireFox with a plugin called whyslow.


This helps a lot and give you a good insight into your website speed and how to fix a lot of common issues.


Good luck

Regards

Hardy

Mar 3, 2012 6:28 PM in response to Jiri Krecek

Would manual private IP assignment as opposed to DHCP make difference?

Have the Cisco router provide a static Private IP address to the AEBSn.


Would geting second Airport help?
Right now, I have Extreme with 2 hardwired devices and a couple wifi ones
What If I had two devices hardwired into the first Extreme: the Mini and a second Extreme, and the rest of devices would be on the second Extreme? Would that improve speed somewhat?

Not really. To provide "more" bandwidth between the Internet router and the web server, you will want to employ a VLAN. Unfortunately, the AirPorts don't support these (outside of the limited Guest Networking feature that is.) With a VLAN you can "shape" the amount of bandwidth on each VLAN segement. So, for example, you would create a dedicated VLAN segment for the web server, and then, create a second for all other network clients.


FWIW, I do this with a Cisco RVS4000 router, which is my main Internet router. I created a number of VLANs in which I have established bandwidth priorities to each segment. This way I can provide most bandwidth for my office, a bit less for the family room, and even less for all the other rooms.


If your Cisco router supports this feature I would highly recommend that you consider using it.


Is there anything else on my end what could be improved or set up differently?

Here are a few suggestions:

  • Be sure to use Gigabit Ethernet between the modem and the web server. That would mean both the modem and the Cisco VoIP router would need to support Gigabit since your AirPort does on both its WAN/LAN ports.
  • Reconfigure the AEBSn as a bridge. Currently, it appears that you have a "Double NAT" configuration where both routers (in series) have NAT enabled. Unless you have a specific reason to operate multiple subnets, data traversing through both NATs will be delayed.
  • Since the Cisco router is upstream it is probably providing VoIP with the highest QoS, meaning that VoIP traffic will get better bandwidth than any going to the AEBSn. You may find that if you reverse these two routers, you can still get sufficient VoIP service and improved service to all network clients (including the web server) connected to the AEBSn.

Mar 3, 2012 6:40 PM in response to Tesserax

Inspiring.


Never thought of the bridge mode. Now I know why Back to my Mac kept yelling at me that I have double NAT and that it cannot function properly. :-)


I've had hour long conversations with Cisco engineers on the topic of moving the Cisco VoIP router behind AE. They were against it. I kept losing signal in both cases and they kept blaming AE. The Cisco is hyper sensitive. It transpired it was my old DOCSIS 1 modem causing the issues. Now I have DOCSIS III and life is good. I'll try to switch the routers and call Cisco again to see which ports must be turned on on AE.


According to FreedomIQ.com test which I did with Cisco engineers, my quality of service is 97% or better, so there shouldn't be any issue. Hopefully.


Thank you again!

I may post some questions back in future.

Slow Mac Mini Webserver

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