Michael-
Once again today, someone is complaining about page load time on the pump. I am beginning to suspect that this is a bandwidth problem. What has been done to investigate the reason behind this problem, and what were the results of said tests? I haven't really heard a straight answer from anyone saying what the problem is, just speculation.
There are a few improvements that are currently being tested which should help speed things up. Getting all the wikis on the latest software will also help, as this includes Brion's caching code. But remember that right now all the languages, sister projects etc. run on *one* database server (the web server load is shared, not the db load). We're still working with very cheap equipment here -- basically not much more than what is under your desk -- and runing a very high traffic website with that. The English Wikipedia alone serves up to 250 gigabytes per month (the German wiki adds up to 40 gigs per month, and so on).
If you told a regular business type that we accomplished all this with free software and a couple of PCs running Linux, they would probably not believe you. As great as this is, we'll have to start sharing the DB load sooner or later.
Regards,
Erik