Reply to: Slow cloud software - Need to record it

[MrMarkyMark]

FTFY

Because whenever Suity pops over, it ends up a hell of a lot worse, performance wise, than before he arrived.

[MarillionFan]

Why don't you get Suity to cobble up a quick application in exchange for a dime?

Because whenever Suity pops over, the loud whining noise drowns out the noise of the engines of the planes coming into land at the local airport.

[MarillionFan]

I'm guessing he wants to record the time it takes to interact with the screen, loading pages, submitting data.

Basically, how awful the user experience is due to lag.


some sort of screen recorder like people use to make tutorials.

Exactly that. Browsers are a little different, but it's mostly to record and show what's happening. The problem with WebEx is it's web based, so don't want the connection slowed.

[MrMarkyMark]

Chrome Developer Tools (built-in to the browser) includes a set of profiling tools: https://developers.google.com/web/to...profile/?hl=en

Start by checking for slow responses over the network - look in the network panel for XHR (XMLHttpRequest) requests/responses, as that's your fancy "Ajax" shenanigans happening. If that looks OK, you can profile their JavaScript to look for any obvious slowness.

But it's probably the latency of XHR calls, which would explain why they don't see any problem in the USA.

True story: when I was at Yahoo, our app was struggling to authenticate users promptly because the User ID backend was on US-based servers. One of our engineers raised this with the guys in the States, suggesting that allowing the data to be cached nearer users (similar to a CDN but for live data) would be better. The guys over there replied that while they acknowledged the issue, they didn't see the need to waste resources addressing "an edge case" - that was the exact term they used.

Our guy sent a blistering response pointing out that those parts of the world that aren't the United States and Canada happen to be considerably larger than those bits that are, and also contain a considerably larger proportion of Y!'s users, so were hardly an edge case.

That got them to address the issue, but the North America-centric attitude towards the fundamental engineering issues involved was extremely telling.

(As it happened, the system for distributed authentication had previously been in use, but the data had all been centralised in the US in response to the well-known case of the Chinese government forcing Y! to hand over user data - if it was in the US, the Chinese couldn't just turn up at the data centre with a forklift and take the servers and disks away for examination when the data wasn't handed over, which is a thing they've done in the past to other companies. The fix was to re-enable the distributed User ID system but only with explicit user approval; so if you have or had a Y! account and, in late 2007, encountered an interstitial when you went to check your mail asking if you minded your data being stored in Ireland, that was why.)

Now I see where one of your specialisms is Nick, very interesting.
You explained what I was getting at, in far more detail than me

@MF, both Nicks and my invoices are in the post.

[DimPrawn]

Come one MF, faced with this situation, a £350k pa. executive like yourself would call DA, and get a £1000/day contractor onsite to fix it ASAP.

AYSYCOTBAP?

[vetran]

Really basic but you could use the developer tools in Chrome (FF and IE also) and select network and checkout the timeline.

Obviously, it only going tell you how long the page takes to load but it's something.

Another option if you are running windows 10 is the recording tool. This will record your interaction.

If you want to get technical use Fiddler, this will you the interaction between your browser and the web server. So will give you a good idea of any ajax calls etc and how long they take.

like Fiddler

have used Yslow.

gives you an easy experience via bookmarklet

Getting started with YSlow - Speed Awareness Month

this looks like a cool feature that might interest you.

YSlow - Official Open Source Project Website




not seen this before maybe worth a look

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/c...0-96067ed50156

[FatLazyContractor]

Question for the team.


Company uses cloud based software for our CRM. Well it's getting slow, really slow for homeworkers and office in Europe


Having complained, got the usual, we can't see anything wrong, works well here in the US, nothing wrong with the network etc.


They've asked different people to prove it. Start a webex, start recording it etc, which takes a load of different steps.


As the latency is mostly browser based, does anyone know of a useful / free and quick to download application that can sit on a windows laptop so you can easily record the interaction with the browser window.


Never recorded anything, so no idea.

Why don't you get Suity to cobble up a quick application in exchange for a dime?

[FatLazyContractor]

When you say it is browser based, what exactly do you mean?

You think he is intelligent enough to know what it means, whatever it is?

[NickFitz]

Chrome Developer Tools (built-in to the browser) includes a set of profiling tools: https://developers.google.com/web/to...profile/?hl=en

Start by checking for slow responses over the network - look in the network panel for XHR (XMLHttpRequest) requests/responses, as that's your fancy "Ajax" shenanigans happening. If that looks OK, you can profile their JavaScript to look for any obvious slowness.

But it's probably the latency of XHR calls, which would explain why they don't see any problem in the USA.

True story: when I was at Yahoo, our app was struggling to authenticate users promptly because the User ID backend was on US-based servers. One of our engineers raised this with the guys in the States, suggesting that allowing the data to be cached nearer users (similar to a CDN but for live data) would be better. The guys over there replied that while they acknowledged the issue, they didn't see the need to waste resources addressing "an edge case" - that was the exact term they used.

Our guy sent a blistering response pointing out that those parts of the world that aren't the United States and Canada happen to be considerably larger than those bits that are, and also contain a considerably larger proportion of Y!'s users, so were hardly an edge case.

That got them to address the issue, but the North America-centric attitude towards the fundamental engineering issues involved was extremely telling.

(As it happened, the system for distributed authentication had previously been in use, but the data had all been centralised in the US in response to the well-known case of the Chinese government forcing Y! to hand over user data - if it was in the US, the Chinese couldn't just turn up at the data centre with a forklift and take the servers and disks away for examination when the data wasn't handed over, which is a thing they've done in the past to other companies. The fix was to re-enable the distributed User ID system but only with explicit user approval; so if you have or had a Y! account and, in late 2007, encountered an interstitial when you went to check your mail asking if you minded your data being stored in Ireland, that was why.)

[MrMarkyMark]

I'm guessing he wants to record the time it takes to interact with the screen, loading pages, submitting data.

Basically, how awful the user experience is due to lag.


some sort of screen recorder like people use to make tutorials.

Ah I see, I was jumping to what I believe will be the root cause.
It may be manifesting itself in the browser, but I suspect the issue will be a dodgy network, or the physical location of the machines, depends on whether the issue has always been there.

In the 3 tier solution I specialise in, all the machines, database, web server and application server, should be next to each other, preferably on the same SAN.

[Pondlife]

When you say it is browser based, what exactly do you mean?

Is it you need to use a packet sniffer to time the requests and returns to each node of the network....or?

I'm guessing he wants to record the time it takes to interact with the screen, loading pages, submitting data.

Basically, how awful the user experience is due to lag.


some sort of screen recorder like people use to make tutorials.

[WTFH]

CamStudio?




But first, since you say the latency is browser based... try different browsers, try switching off all the browser add-ons, try clearing browser cache, try switching off anti-virus

[woohoo]

Really basic but you could use the developer tools in Chrome (FF and IE also) and select network and checkout the timeline.

Obviously, it only going tell you how long the page takes to load but it's something.

Another option if you are running windows 10 is the recording tool. This will record your interaction.

If you want to get technical use Fiddler, this will you the interaction between your browser and the web server. So will give you a good idea of any ajax calls etc and how long they take.

[MrMarkyMark]

When you say it is browser based, what exactly do you mean?

Is it you need to use a packet sniffer to time the requests and returns to each node of the network....or?

[DimPrawn]

I read that as Snow Cloud Software.

But as Snow is now a thing of past, there is obviously no such thing.