Connection long to establish

[Berlue]

It seems that lately, speed for my PowWeb-hosted site has been on the slow side.

Actually, more precisely, it's the establishment of a connection that is especially long.

It always takes at least 5 seconds *just to establish the connection* -- sometimes, it can take almost 7-8 seconds. That's pretty long.

It really seems slower than before, and it is starting to annoy me.

Any clues?

[Berlue]

By sifting through the archives, I see that there seem to be recurrent problems with cluster07.

My site resides on cluster07.

Anybody else finding that things are quite slow (especially WRT to establishment of connections?)

[stevel]

What's your site URL?

Go to http://websitepulse.com/help/tools.php and run the website test twice. The reason I suggest twice is that the first takes care of the delay for DNS lookup. This will give you an idea if it is something between you and PowWeb or perhaps on the server itself, though your site's scripts are part of the total time.

Then try the "port test". When I do this with clust07.powweb.com, I get:

Port Test results
Status: OK
DNS lookup time: 0.185 sec
Connection time: 0.023 sec
First byte: 0.000 sec
Last byte: 0.000 sec

In other words, pretty darned fast.

[Berlue]

Hmm...

Thanks for the tip!

The numbers I got were pretty reasonable -- similar to yours.

So, this would seem to indicate that it is some of my stuff that is actually the bottleneck.

I'll try disabling some plugins and so on.

Also, could having my site's traffic analysed by StatCounter account for a significant part of the slowdown?

[songv]

What is your website, so I can take a look at it.?

[Berlue]

http://berlue.com

[gardensafari]

Yes, the page is slow. On my pc (using cable and FireFox) it took your page 17 seconds to load. That's too long indeed. When surfing I usually don't wait that long. I looked at the source of the page, but there's a lot going on.... I am no expert, just wanted you to know it is slow indeed.

[Berlue]

Thanks... I guess... :)

I know it's slow; I'm trying to find out why.

Especially what can happen between the "Connecting" message in my browser and the "Loading" message.

[stevel]

Fetching just the HTML from your home page is fairly fast. I see in the HTML the following as a comment:
<!-- 88 queries. 1.804 seconds. -->

88 queries? For one page? Yeesh....

Anyway, this shows that the server itself isn't the problem.

The page loaded in about 5-6 seconds for me. As it doesn't pull in a lot of images (good!), I would suggest you temporarily remove the statcounter script and see if that helps.

[Berlue]

OK, I'm making some good progress.

88 queries indeed seem like alot...

Surprisingly, removing the StatCounter code had almost no impact. So I put it back in (I think they provide a very nice service).

I played with the plugins I installed for my site (which is powered by WordPress). 2 of them had a significant impact (Extended Live Archives [ELA] and Ultimate Tag Warrior[UTW]). (Actually, make that 3 -- also disabled one called "Rolling Archives" that I had installed recently just because it looked good...)

In an amazing coincidence, a new version of ELA was just released that made it so the JavaScript was only loaded on the appropriate page (the Archive page), not on the main page and all others.

This gave a tremendous boost.

I also decided to ditch UTW, coming to the conclusion that I don't *really* need tags for my posts — that categories suffice. Another significant boost.

The other plugins had very little effect on speed.

Coming back to the first subject: what is still bugging me is the wait that occurs during the establishment of connection. I don't know what exactly happens then, but it sure takes a lot of time... (And my tests did not seem to affect that part of the process.)

[stevel]

I don't think that the connection time is really what you are looking at - you don't know for sure what the browser is doing at that time. It may not change the status until it wants to begin rendering the page. You can test this easily enough with the tools above.

[Berlue]

Yeah, I understand... but still, what's the distinction between the two "moments", then?(It's the same thing in different browsers.)

For example:

- In Safari, about 3 seconds passes while stating that it is "Connecting"; then it says "Loading"

- In Firefox, about 3 seconds while stating "Waiting for berlue.com"; then it says "Transferring data"

And so on.

I really wonder what happens during those 3 or so seconds. (And I wish I could reduce this waiting time, of course...)

[Berlue]

Actually, by doing once again the tests at WebSitePulse, I realize that the "Connection" time indicated in the browser is really that.

The page states that it "test[s] the status and response time of a specific web page or cgi, together with the server status and server type."

It clearly doesn't transfer anything from the site.

So that's it.

Those times vary quite a bit, though. Right now, I'm doing multiple tests. And I get numbers ranging from slightly below 1 second to more than 13 seconds... (Just to receive a response.) From good to extremely bad. Right now, the average time seems to be around 4.5 seconds (it seems especially bad right now). I consider that very poor.

So I guess the question is: what kind of numbers are you getting for the *Website test* (for your site).

[gardensafari]

Did the test in the Netherlands for my own domain, 6 times! Page 6305 bytes, time varying between 0.5 en 2.4 seconds, which is normal according to WebSitePulse. Port-test: DNS 0.002 seconds, connection 0.158

I think I may conclude there's no problem at PowWeb.

Cheers,

Hans

[Berlue]

First: the port test is irrelevant in this case. The important one is really the WebSite test (obtaining a response from the Web server).

Second: are you on cluster07? If not, that changes everything.

[gardensafari]

I'm on cluster 6. Are yousure there's something wrong with 7 only. In which case you are right and I should shut up.

[stevel]

Actually, by doing once again the tests at WebSitePulse, I realize that the "Connection" time indicated in the browser is really that.

The page states that it "test[s] the status and response time of a specific web page or cgi, together with the server status and server type."

It clearly doesn't transfer anything from the site.

Not true. The "website test" actually fetches all the HTML from the site. It does not interpret the HTML, however. This particular test is NOT a simple ping or "get the headers".

[Berlue]

Yeah, it seems that you're right. Sorry.

I've just thought (stupid me) of doing a simple test. I've placed a bare-bones text file and requested that file by HTTP.

The "about 3 seconds, sometimes more" delay was not there. It was repeatedly quite fast.

So, it is clear that the delay is not due to network issues. You were right.

I gather from all this that the delay is probably due to the executing of a number of PHP instructions very early on in the process -- probably some low-level WordPress stuff.

Maybe it is the mysql server driving the WordPress database that is slow... ;)

Or maybe WordPress is just really slow. (As well as Drupal -- I'm testing a site in Drupal too.)

Thanks for all the help.