WebPageTest.org Test Results

Web Performance Discuss Test Results
1

Hey Patrick,

I noticed my test results for the testing center in china has been really slow performance wise. Thus, I decided to run a quick test with your domain to see how you performed with this center.

China Test:
http://www.webpagetest.org/result/100622_CBY/1/performance_optimization/

Dulles, VA Test:
http://www.webpagetest.org/result/100622_CC6/1/performance_optimization/

How does the same graphic show up as using a CDN on one test and the other does not? For example, the following graphic does this:
http://cdn.webpagetest.org/images/visual.png

I recently joined maxcdn and my test results are doing the same thing depending which center I test at. I was thinking the dns might not be propagated around the world yet but your cdn subdomain with maxcdn has been up for awhile now so it has me wondering.

Sincerely,
Travis Walters

2

Sorry, China and San Jose don’t have the latest code yet (which is when MaxCDN was added to the known-CDN list). It won’t affect the performance, just the CDN grade.

Performance from China sucks for everyone in general - the “great firewall” and network egress make it one of the slowest locations regardless of what site you are testing.

3

I did not even know about the great firewall of china.

I suppose the only way around this would be to have my own server inside china that mirrors my original server in california.

4

Or to use a CDN provider with POP’s in China (though your base page would still be subject to delay).

5

I’m getting dreadful (1 sec +) DNS lookups in China, which are not the general experience of some mainland China colleagues sniffing DNS lookups from the home PCs. Roundtrip time to a China CDN is good though…

Would that be a great firewall symptom do people think?

6

Hey there,

I believe the DSN lookups are where the request attempt to resolve the domain name.

With a firewall, I believe these DNS lookups take longer because China is strict when it comes to which websites mainland users can visit.

Out of curiosity, do other countries have firewalls like this or is a firewall something specific to China?

Sincerely,
Travis Walters

7

Some other countries will occasionally put DNS blocks in for sites but China is the only one I’m aware of with a country-wide complete filtering platform (though they claim it doesn’t exist).