Web site migration and differences in firebug time profiles

Question

I have a php web site under apache (at enginehosting.com). I rewrote it in asp.net MVC and installed it at discountasp.net. I am comparing response times with firebug.

Here is the old time profile:

Here is the new one:

Basically, I get longer response times with the new site (not obvious on the pictures I posted here but in average yes with sometimes a big difference like 2s for the old site and 9s for the new one) and images appear more progressively (as opposed to almost instantly with the old site). Moreover, the time profile is completely different. As you can see on the second picture, there is a long time passed in DNS search and this happens for images only (the raw html is even faster on the new site). I thought that once a url has been resolved, then it would be applied for all subsequent requests...

Also note that since I still want to keep my domain pointed on the old location while I'm testing, my new site is under a weird URL like myname.web436.discountasp.net. Could it be the reason? Otherwise, what else?

If this is more a serverfault question, feel free to move it.

Thanks

Answer 1

Unfortunately you're comparing apples and oranges here. The test results shown are of little use because you're trying to compare the performance of an application written using a different technology AND on a different hosting company's shared platform.

We could speculate any number of reasons why there may be a difference:

• ASP.NET MVC first hit and lag due to warmup and compilation
• The server that you're hosting on at DiscountASP may be under heavy load
• The server at EngineHosting may be under utilised
• The bandwidth available at DiscountASP may be under contention
• You perhaps need to profile and optimise your code
• ...and so on.

But until you benchmark both applications on the same machine you're not making a proper scientific comparison and are going to be pulling a straws.

Finally, ignore the myname.web436.discountasp.net url, that's just a host name/header DiscountASP and many other hosters add so you can test your site if you're waiting for a domain to be transferred/registered, or for a DNS propagation of the real domain name to complete. You usually can't use the IP addresse of your site because most shared hosters share a single IP address across multiple sites on the same server and use HTTP Host Headers.