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Central Desktop Performance Guide

This troubleshooting guide is intended for users who are experiencing performance problems with Central Desktop. 

How to measure performance? 

At the lower left hand part of virtually every page within the Central Desktop application there is a Server and Client Execution time.  These two numbers should give you a quantifiable performance gauge. 

Server Execution Time

Indicates the amount of time it takes for a page to be generated from the Central Desktop Servers. 

Normal range is 0.1 - 0.8 second.

 

Client Execution Time

Indicates the amount of time it took the page to render on your browser.  This is the amount of time it takes to transfer the content from Central Desktop server to your machine and render the page. 

Normal range is 0.5 - 3 seconds. 

If you are seeing times in excess of this you may have a problem.  Please note that pages with lots of content on them may take longer to load than others, so times may vary, but the times listed above are general norms.

If you are seeing significantly higher load times we will need to following information to help troubleshoot the problem: 

• What kind of internet connection are you on?
• • High Speed Broadband such as DSL/Cable or faster is recommended.
• Where are you physically located?
• • Our main data center is in California.   The further you are away (China, India, etc...) the slower the page may take to load.
  • If you are in Europe go to My Account and change your setting under Preferences to London UK data center.
    
• What type of machine are you on?  Pentium 4, iMac, etc...
  
• What operating system and browser are you running?  What version of each?
• • Have you perhaps tried another browser such as Firefox or Internet Explorer?
    
• If you are sharing an internet connection with other users (you are on a home/office network) do other machines exhibit the same problem? 
  
• • If not, the problem is likely with your machine.
  • Do other remote users (if any) have the same problems?
    
• Are you accessing Central Desktop via SSL?  (https type connection)
• • If you are, what happens when you access Central Desktop without ssl?  (http)
    
• Have you tried accessing Central Desktop from another connection? (such as your office or home or vice versa)  Are there any speed improvements when you do so?
• Are you on a Proxy?
• Are running any sort of IDS (Intrusion Detection System) that does keyword filtering?

The answers to these questions may help us determine how to remedy any performance issues you might be having with Central Desktop. 

Firefox Performance Trick:

If you are using Firefox and accessing Central Desktop via SSL you can cache more content longer by doing the following:

1. In your address bar type: "about:config"
2. Filter on: browser.cache.disk_cache_ssl
3. Set this option to TRUE

This will ensure that SSL content gets cached to disk not just memory.   Please note this Firefox setting will affect all SSL traffic (including bank accounts, etc...)

Firefox Browser Causing Excessive Page Load Times in Central Desktop (over 2 seconds)

If you observe Excessive Page Load Times using the Firefox browser, but not in IE, you may try the following.

    ( It could be that your prefs.js file has become bloated if you have installed and uninstalled many addons.) 

   - Disable ALL Firefox extensions / addons, Tools -> Addons.

   - Locate the Firefox prefs.js file, which on Windows XP will be in the system profile folder:

            C:\Documents and Settings\<User>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<default.profile>\

    - Rename the "prefs.js" file to "prefs.js.bak"

            Firefox will create a new prefs.js file when it launches.

    - Re-Launch Firefox browser and check the prefs.js file.  It should be empty except for a few entries.

    - Enable one addon and exit Firefox.

    - Launch Firefox and check the performance of Central Desktop.

    - Continue this procedure until all your addons have been re-enabled.

    - Create a backup copy of the prefs.js to something like prefs_todays-date.js.bak

Note: You can use a file compare/diff utility such as SourceForge's WinMerge to view differences between the prefs.js files. 

Some known Firefox Extensions that conflict with Central Desktop (or cause performance problems - if you are running any of these please disable them)

• Firebug
• YSlow