Polite API slow

Metadata Retrieval Interfaces for Machines
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There’s currently an open incident with the public API, which seems to have been resolved though it’s still marked as ‘degraded performance’. (The forum doesn’t seem to let me include links for some reason, so: https://0-status-crossref-org.library.alliant.edu/incidents/d7k4ml9vvswv)

We use the polite API, but that has been slow for the last few days. (Tried to include a screenshot here too, but that’s not allowed either. Over the last week, response times have regularly been in the seconds, the highest being 27.)

The last-24-hour response time for the polite API is currently 4,472 ms, in comparison to the public’s 994 ms.

Is this related to the problems with the public API?

We tend to have a 2-second timeout on requests to Crossref, so this has been noticeable for us. What threshold should trigger a ‘degraded performance’ incident?

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Hi, yes the problems are related. We’re experiencing really high traffic so while no single user or request is triggering a limit, collectively the service is slow for everyone. We get a lot of inefficient and repeat or overlapped requests where errors don’t seem to be noticed, so we’ve been discussing a new plan for balancing that we’ll try starting next Monday. That will involve a little experimentation and we’ll start a new post probably on the blog to update everyone on the specific things we’re trying out. Thanks for your patience!

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And sorry you couldn’t add a screenshot. Lotta spam here to deflect but you’re in now!!

Ginny

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Hi @thewilkybarkid, we added more info over on the blog: Rebalancing our REST API traffic - Crossref

Ginny

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Hi @Ginny,

That’s great, thanks for the details!