The server is running fine, except for a problem I just fixed that was causing file attachments or avatar uploads to fail. This was due to something not being setup that should have been on the server (the forums were recently moved from one box to another). The server that runs the forums is dedicated to nothing but the forums.
Many things can effect the speed of the site... Like the number of users hitting the forums at any given time, although, it can handle quite a number of users at once. I haven't seen any type of server load issue since the Cobra abuse fiasco that should has seemed to adversely effected server performance. However, if a large number of people are transferring data across our sites as a whole (forums, media center, ad delivery, and everything else making up MW) and bandwidth usage is really high that might bog things a little bit. However, we have a large pipe to the Internet (a fractional T3 running at 2.5 Megabits) so I have never seen anything yet it didn't handle we've gotten hit with yet usage wise. At worst, a load of users might cause greater latency, but the bandwidth is there.
Outside our pipe and the hosting environment, there's your own ISP's network and the servers your traffic passes through to get here and back too. More often this is the cause of slowdowns, as during peek usage on the web many bottlenecks can occur slowing things down.
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