'UK' test node problems?

Web Performance Testing Tools/Services
1

Hi all,

We have scripted the use of WebPageTest and it has been running flawlessly for a fairly long time (~12 months). Recently (since June 15th) the UK test node has been returning erroneous results.

The main test result for the first and repeat view shows ‘Timed out’ but still shows all the individual page components without errors.

e.g. http://www.webpagetest.org/result/110620_4M_56c4fe3d7d6398048f4474b911fcff03/

Does anyone know of any reason why this might be the case? Has something changed that requires me to update the back-end scripts (not touched for about 4 months)? How can I determine what component has ‘Timed out’?

2

It looks like it’s never reaching onLoad (IE is notorious for issues that cause this, but it’s usually triggered by flash). Unfortunately the browser messages aren’t very helpful either (on the screen shot page)

Waiting for http://www.pkt.pl.bat.eurodir.eu/firmy/warszawa/q_fryzjerzy/1/...

The screen shot does look pretty messed up though. Do you have access to an IE7 browser to try testing the site manually?

3

Just to add to this, I can not use the London server either. There is no flash on my website at all.

http://www.webpagetest.org/result/110620_WP_W5A2/
http://www.webpagetest.org/result/110620_V1_W53P/

Was using IE9.

Defaulting to the server in Frankfurt, which is closer to the web server but further from my customer base.

I hope my web page isn’t timing out randomly for people in London, although that might explain the drop in calls last week.

4

Interesting. We have Flash on the page but it’s always been there and yet it was working correctly for the last successful test at 05h30 on the morning of the 15th June.
e.g. WebPageTest Test - Running web page performance and optimization tests...

I’ve just tried and can see no issues.

Any other ideas? I’d rather not switch test locations or browser type as we won’t be able to compare new results to previous results.

5

FWIW, looking at the screen shots of the failed tests, the map on the right of the page didn’t load.

6

Sorry, slightly different issues. eurodir is using the IE7 agent in Gloucester. I’ll take a look at the London IE9 agent but since it’s successfully retrieving work from my server it has to have connectivity to the internet. It looks like it failed to connect to your server though. I’ll try running a traceroute to see if anything obvious jumps out.

7

Looks like the London IE9 agent is having DNS problems - I’ll have it fixed in just a couple of minutes (hopefully)

8

Those map tiles are loaded by Javascript which should only kick-in during the onLoad, which doesn’t appear to be being reached - as you mentioned before.

I’ve just been through our deployment logs and can find no changes at our end. If there’s no reason that you know of for the ‘UK’ node to behaving oddly then I might switch to IE9 to see if that makes a difference. It will probably change our results since I would expect IE9 to render quicker than IE7 but I think we’re more interested in TTFB and Document Complete times.

9

I’ve just restarted the Gloucester node. Please can you retry your tests. I have confirmed that it is currently working on flash sites:
http://www.webpagetest.org/result/110620_MG_W777/

It appears that there was a MS windows update that required the machine to be restarted (Updates are applied automatically as and when they are available). Maybe this could have been the cause of the issue?

10

Preliminary results look good!

11

The IE9 agent is back up and running again as well.

12

Hi

I know this is an old thread but I cannot see the options for additional user agents in London.

It only shows IE7 and IE8

IE9, chrome, firefox user agents are much needed for london searchs

Do you know the reason for this issue?

Thanks, lu

13

The IE9/Chrome/Firefox test agent was producing inconsistent results so I took it offline. We should have a new agent up in the next few weeks but if you need results sooner you should be able to use the Dublin location. It should be less than 10ms away latency-wise and has all of the browsers available.