can anyone help me understand 'failed request'
 

when i look at my server stats. which is pretty basic. i think this might be the program (Web statistics report produced by: analog 6.0 / Report Magic 2.21). not sure really.

anyway i noticed a line that says.

Failed requests 42,633 Requests

this sounds like it is bad for me? can anyone help me understand and is there anything i can do about it?

-abatis

The only thing I can think of that would both fail to fulfil a request but also show up on the stats is if the server is running slow and cannot even start sending the page before timing out. (Possible causes; too narrow a pipe for the quantity of traffic, too little processing power for the quantity of scripts, too slow a hard drive for the number of requests.) However I am no hosting guru, this knowledge comes from using a crap German hosting company many years back, so you really need to ask someone who runs servers for a living. (I was not going to reply, I expected some such person to do so. But as no one has, I thought my little knowledge would be better than nothing.)

If that is a lot of requests, the server might be looking for your website icon!

amazingly there is even a tab that says 'failed report' which lists the failed requested file path, which is all icon requests, which pretty much matches up to the number in the summary under 'failed requests' so low and behold, lol..

funny how we miss things that are right in our faces sometimes.


-abatis