Overview | Key factors

Page Detailer: Important considerations

Some important considerations while taking measurements are:

• Impact of network delays

  Many problems may not be evident when accessing a server on a local network, but may become apparent when accessing the site remotely, particularly when using a modem connection. On the other hand, you can minimize the effect of external network delays by directly connecting on the Server's LAN. This will allow you to isolate the performance impact of a change made to the Web page.

• Browser cache

  Disabling the browser cache helps in getting repeatable results. However, you could also check the performance from a user's perspective by enabling the browser cache and comparing both results.

• Packet loss

  Packet loss can happen and get corrected in the underlying TCP/IP layers. This is invisible to the Page Detailer. Packet loss manifests itself as inconsistent time measurements in Page Detailer. You can take a series of measurements at different times to factor it out.