Why is DegreeForum so SLOW lately?

[studyingfortests]

Server issues is one thing for the web host LiquidWeb, but it's more the ISP (Comcast) who the webhost uses may also have issues...

It is not a Comcast issue. Any competent webhost (and LiquidWeb is definitely competent) has at least 4 or 5 providers for transit. They have sophisticated border routers in the data center that are constantly checking the best routing to a given IP address, updated multiple times per minute.

If an issue arises with a given transit provider, the border router seamlessly routes around the problem.

Now... if, in your example, Comcast was having an issue, it would be tricky. Most hosts peer with Comcast simply because Comcast serves so much end user transit. But it would be unlikely the entire Comcast network were having issues, so in that case, the routing software would simply identify a Comcast node where they could enter and deliver the content, routing around wherever the Comcast issue is.

Additinoally, traceroute was making it to LiquidWeb with no problem, with no meaningful latency.  All the latency was coming from the last hop, inside LiquidWeb. Again, this makes it pretty much impossible for it to be a Comcast issue.

This is almost certainly an issue within LiquidWeb.  It's possible they're getting clobbered with DOS attacks, which is making it difficult for anybody in their data center to get transit through, or it could be a server or database server issue. In my experience, it is most commonly one of those things.

I will say that, for now, things seem to be working normally.