If a GN4 system misses a lot of wire new, check the clock on the Back4 server. If the clock on the Back4 server is behind, you will lose wire. This same behavior happens with all versions of GN4 up to 2.1.

The problem seems to be in the logic which uses the “Last Read Time” setting in Back4’s Feed:

The setting (s_DatasrcfeedTable.s_lastReadTime) is used to compare with the updated-timestamp of each wire story, which is probably read from the following XML tag which each article has:

<updated>2015-01-13T22:26:33.667Z</updated>

If the article has been updated before the recorded timestamp from last poll, it is considered “already received” and it is filtered out.

This works fine as long as the local clock on the Back4 server is correct. If it is behind, it will cause a lot of new wire stories to be inadvertently filtered out.

Examples

•The local clock is 45 seconds behind and the wire is polled once per minute. This caused almost all wires to be considered “already received” and hence filtered out by Back4.

•The local clock is about 5 minutes behind and the wire was polled every 1.5 minutes. Because of this, you actually never got any new wire. Only time you got a wire was if I manually reset the “Last Read Time” in which case we got wire on the first poll only.

Tip to avoid this issue

Ensure the clock on the Back4 server is accurate.