BrainKing Performance Tuning

I have discovered a great tool to measure a network speed between your computer and our servers. It is very easy to use and can provide interesting results, useful for any further investigation.



If you want to, please click the Begin Test button and when the test is done, please add a comment with the download and upload values, along with your location. It would be great if these tests are performed more times during this weekend and Monday.

Thanks and have fun.

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)

Yes, it is here again, I am posting again what was already posted many times. It seems that this topic is a "fixed star" and never goes off. But I hate to copy and paste only, so there is some more information - whether it is popular or not is up to everyone to decide.

Just as Einstein observed that space was not an absolute but depended on the observer's movement in time, and that time was not an absolute, but depended on the observer's movement in space, so it is realized that BrainKing's speed is not an absolute but depended on the observer's location in the web.

I have made an experiment and check BrainKing accounts of all users who have been complaining about BrainKing being too slow for them during the recent month, one by one. The checking procedure has consisted of the following steps:

• Logging in and displaying the most important BrainKing pages - Main Page (game list), a discussion board page, a game page, a tournament page (with section tables), a fellowship page, a profile page, etc.
• Doing it again with all three styles (castle, simple and no fonts), all major web browsers (the latest versions of Firefox, Internet Explorer and Opera), and three different internet connections (cable, ADSL and mobile GPRS).

Outcome:

• Average page generation time is 0.3 seconds.
• Average page loading time is 1-2 seconds (except GPRS, where the loading time increases to 5-10 seconds, but GPRS is a very slow connection type anyway).
• No performance issues have been observed during a 30 minutes long continuous test.

I have also checked accounts of a few users who have more than 2000 started games at this moment, just to make sure that this number has no negative impact on the performance. The results have been almost the same, except the page generation time which have increased to 1.5 seconds (logically, it takes a little more time to create a page with a table containing 2000 rows).

These tests were performed several times in different hours to check the site behavior in different time zones.

Conclusion: Based on all possible tests we are capable of to do, BrainKing has no known performance issues, regarding the server side. The total duration of all tests also forecloses the local network line bottleneck as a possible cause of slow page loading.

Got it? I hope it is clear enough even for rattlebrains and blog trolls.

Further explanation of possible causes of a slowness:

• BrainKing generates pages too slowly - negative. This is a server-side only feature and is not affected by the target user location. The mentioned tests have proved that the average page generation time is very fast.
• BrainKing works slowly only for certain users - negative. The tests have been done for more than 15 different accounts of different levels, different number of started games and different amount of total displayed information. No anomalies have been detected.
• BrainKing transfers generated pages too slowly - negative. Since the tests have been done using 3 different connections and one of them works through a foreign proxy server (located in Europe but not in our country), it is proved that at least the speed of local lines is sufficient. And it is logical that we cannot affect the performance of other lines which are not controlled by us. That's the nature of the web.
• BrainKing is slow and all other sites are fast - negative. Yes, that's one of the most popular complaints. And one of the most annoying myths too. A term "brainwashed" suggests itself first of all, but I think it's better to say that people are not used to think globally. I could say with the same "success" that PayPal is the slowest money processing site in the world and all other sites of this kind are operating at a light speed, and it would be just the same nonsense.

For any further information, please read About the complexity (part 1) (and I recommend to read the section containing Important! Do not use BrainKing public discussion boards for this purpose. in particular - meaningful comments can be posted here instead), Bug me not! or BrainKing site performance again.

And yes, this article is meant to be provoking. (to be continued - most likely)