Is Spark the slowest website in NZ?

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DaveB

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Topic # 160406 5-Jan-2015 21:45

Or is it just me?

It has been slow for so long and the business features such as usage etc take ages to load.

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Reply # 1208832 5-Jan-2015 22:36

No problems here; OS X 10.10.1, MacBook Pro connected to a Huawei HG659b router on 5Ghz frequency.

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old3eyes

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Reply # 1209125 6-Jan-2015 12:12

I've noticed it's been quite slow for the past month or two..

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Old3eyes

NZSpides

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Reply # 1209134 6-Jan-2015 12:22

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Oddly enough I just visited the site and it took a couple of seconds to load, it's actually quite quick.
I remember visiting my parents a couple of years ago and they has the old site as their default site on startup and the page took ages to load.
Admittedly the page was huge and full of shockwave/flash adds etc, so no surprises there.

The front page is actually manageable again - not just a mass of links and flashing bars etc to grab your attention!.

Well done Spark!

(you still can't entice me to join you though) :-)

kiwikiwi

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Reply # 1209266 6-Jan-2015 14:42

Taking 1.2 seconds to load from a orcon fiber connection :)
It's certainly improved since the last time I visited the website which was 2 and a half years ago.

You can also follow me on twitter here @kiwifortw I do twitch streams every now and then at twitch.tv/kiwiforthewin :)

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trig42

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Reply # 1209304 6-Jan-2015 15:31

Just took me about 2 seconds to load. Our internet at work is a WAN with the endpoint in Australia - so not the fastest way to get to a NZ website.
Not slow at all.

plambrechtsen

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Reply # 1209458 6-Jan-2015 19:23

The website may have a lot of stuff on it, but really with unlimited why do you need to even visit it?

Accessing the MySpark portal can take some time as it needs to talk to a multitude of systems to pull up all the information. So yes that does take a while to load.

l43a2

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Reply # 1209494 6-Jan-2015 20:25

should put it on cloudflare.

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kiwikiwi

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Reply # 1209495 6-Jan-2015 20:26

l43a2: should put it on cloudflare.

Then it would be a 4MS response time. Cause isn't cloudflare now in New Zealand or aren't they supposed to be deploying it by now? Freitasm posted a thread about it a while ago I think.

You can also follow me on twitter here @kiwifortw I do twitch streams every now and then at twitch.tv/kiwiforthewin :)

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michaelmurfy

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Reply # 1209516 6-Jan-2015 20:41

kiwikiwi:
l43a2: should put it on cloudflare.

Then it would be a 4MS response time. Cause isn't cloudflare now in New Zealand or aren't they supposed to be deploying it by now? Freitasm posted a thread about it a while ago I think.

They've got BGP ready in NZ for providers to get peering ready however don't have any servers hosted just yet - just a few routers in Auckland and some empty racks pretty much. Spark's servers are hosted in NZ too.

Their homepage at the moment is about 1.5mb, takes on average 6.2sec for an average home computer to load it and when I bench-tested it on low, mid and high end computers on 100mbit UFB I got a average time of 3.8sec. The site doesn't appear to be using caching (apart from your standard browsing caching), doesn't have gzip compression and can be Minify'd quite a bit in order to make it load faster - Freitasm would know all about this.

In general yes, the site is slow but not quite as slow as Orcon's or Slingshots site. Spark's site has the potential to be quick if they would just leverage browser caching correctly and maybe lower the size of some images. I think stuff.co.nz is the worst site in NZ for load times (at an average of 8sec).

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timmmay

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Reply # 1209528 6-Jan-2015 20:52

Just had a quick look, Snap UFB, the Spark website seems quite.... snappy.

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kiwikiwi

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Reply # 1209529 6-Jan-2015 20:53

Just tested Stuff.co.nz wasn't a 8 second load for me. But I can see why it needs a shrink.

You can also follow me on twitter here @kiwifortw I do twitch streams every now and then at twitch.tv/kiwiforthewin :)

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Inphinity

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Reply # 1209531 6-Jan-2015 21:05

Seems fine to me...

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raytaylor

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Reply # 1209546 6-Jan-2015 21:43

Around ~2003 I went to a telecom roadshow where they promoted the new "mobile broadband" service.
During the presentaton, the guy decided to pull up the old telecom website (current then) which i knew was generally slow.
Big mistake on his part - audience snickering at the slow speed.

Ray Taylor
Taylor Broadband (rural hawkes bay)
www.ruralkiwi.com

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plambrechtsen

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Reply # 1209659 7-Jan-2015 08:45

In my view if this is the worst thing about Spark that everyone has an issue with... Then I am pretty happy. Since it means delivering excellent services including fixed broadband, mobile coverage and everything else apart from the web site.

Considering everything in the telco market in NZ right now. I think we do an excellent job overall.

Ragnor

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Reply # 1209929 7-Jan-2015 14:24

~90 http requests, near 2MB, 10sec for all http requests to finish (6sec till on load)

Yeah it's pretty average...

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