About the complexity (part 3)

I have created a new article category, called "BrainKing Performance Tuning". Actually, it is not about the site performance, which is very good, as the tests prove many times. More precisely, it is about BrainKing connectivity tuning.

I have made another experiment today. Using the functionality of public proxy servers, I have routed my Firefox connection through 5 different proxy servers (located in Germany, France, United Kingdom, USA and Canada), one by one, and tested the average loading time of selected BrainKing pages. In order to compare results with my local access, I have opened the same BrainKing at the next Firefox tab and performed the same clicks.

The results are interesting, more or less. The average page loading time is:

• The same as the local one - 1-2 seconds (Germany and France)
• 3-4 seconds (United Kingdom)
• 5-6 seconds (USA and Canada)

One could say that the more remote the proxy server is, the longer delay has been detected. It is logical - the data must pass through more network nodes and routers, and every single one can cause a short delay. That's how the internet works and due to the same reason, PayPal (an example) is much slower for me than local sites.

I would like to make one thing fully clear - this is not a definitive conclusion of any kind, I have just made some tests to confirm my theories. However, if I take the measured times as some kind of reference, it is not a bad result at all, considering the fact that BrainKing pages had to be sent there and back (e.g. from BrainKing server to the American proxy and then back to my computer), so if we divide the time by two, we get an average loading time of 4 seconds. Furthermore, proxy servers can be used by hundreds or thousands of other people simultaneously, so some kind of overload (ergo, more delay) has been expected as well. Videlicet: It is slower than my local NIX connection but still far from being called "dead slow".

Important: It is not recommended to use any public proxy servers to access sites where any kind of personal information must be submitted (including user names and passwords) - thus it is not recommended to use them to access BrainKing. And, of course, I didn't make these checks with Fencer account. For security reasons, a normal test account has been used instead.

However, there is something ... (to be continued)