1. WWW.GETRPO.COM
RUNTIME PAGE OPTIMIZER
MEASURE SHAREPOINT
PERFORMANCE
“Fast is better SharePoint is recognized as the gold standard for developing rich sites that connect
than slow” businesses to their customers across the globe.
A high performing SharePoint intranet or internet site creates an important first
impression for visitors. On the web, fast is better than slow.
Is your SharePoint site fast or slow?
The challenge in answering this question has been the limited availability of tools and
methodologies for accurately measuring page load speeds as users experience them
in the real world.
This paper introduces guidelines for setting page load goals, demonstrates the latest
technologies for measuring your site’s speed and introduces the Runtime Page
Optimizer a new component for increasing the performance of SharePoint sites.
1: Page load goals
“Thirty-three As businesses increasingly use SharePoint for intranets and internets, page load times
percent of need to fit to industry standards set by internet sites. The following goals are based on
consumers accredited industry research for internet sites and are equally applicable to intranets.
shopping via a
Page load goal: 4 seconds
broadband
Based on research from Jupiter and Akamai, “Thirty-three percent of consumers
connection will
shopping via a broadband connection will wait no more than four seconds for a Web
wait no more
page to render”. For page load times, four seconds is the current goal to aim for.
than four
seconds for a Page load upper maximum: 8 seconds
ii
Web page to The “8 second rule” was proposed by Zona Research in 1999. A decade ago in the
i
render” days of pre-Pentium computers and dial-up, this was an admirable standard to achieve;
today it should serve as a maximum wait time after which people will leave wondering if
the site is broken.
Exceptions: warm-load and processing pages
The two exceptions are warm-load (when someone navigates back to a previous page
– these pages need to load in under two seconds. Processing pages such as credit
card validation or signing in can take longer – people expect to wait if they perceive the
website is doing some work requested on their behalf.
Based on these, we recommend the following goals for an average user with a
broadband connection:

2. WWW.GETRPO.COM
RUNTIME PAGE OPTIMIZER
MEASURE SHAREPOINT PERFORMANCE
Page type A: Great B: Fair C: Bad
First time visit (no cache) < 4 seconds 4–8 > 8 seconds
seconds
Warm load (primed cache) < 2 seconds 2–8 > 8 seconds
seconds
Processing page < 4 seconds 4 – 15 >15 seconds
seconds
2: Measure your SharePoint site’s speed
The only meaningful measurement of a page’s speed is how fast a page loads in a customer’s web
browser from their location – network latency plays a huge role in page load times, and measuring speed
from a PC located close to the web server does not capture the real-world travel time over the internet.
We recommend using one of two methods for measuring a page’s speed:
a) If the SharePoint site has internet-facing public pages, use the AOL Page Test to measure page
load times from Dulles, VA, USA. This is a free website where you enter your site’s URL, and the
server loads the page with Internet Explorer and displays the results after a few seconds.
b) If the SharePoint site is an intranet or non-public site, use either Microsoft Internet Explorer or
Mozilla Firefox to measure the local page load time and apply a multiplier to estimate the load
time for users accessing the site remotely.
Before we start, let’s familiarize ourselves with the
Waterfall diagram (shown right). This is a standard
diagram produced by performance measuring
tools.
The Y axis shows the files (requests) in the order
they were loaded. The X axis shows elapsed time.
In the image to the right, the HTML page for
www.aol.com is loaded first, then the CSS files,
JavaScript files and images. The HTML,
JavaScript and CSS files are loaded sequentially
one-after-the-other, while several images are
loaded in parallel.
Server-based testing: AOL PageTest
The AOL PageTest is a free over-the-web tool for performance testing a page from either Dulles, VA,
USA or Wellington New Zealand.
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3. WWW.GETRPO.COM
RUNTIME PAGE OPTIMIZER
MEASURE SHAREPOINT PERFORMANCE
To use the AOL PageTest:
1. Go to
www.webpagetest.org (USA), or
www.webpagetest.org.nz (New Zealand)
2. Type in your site address, e.g. www.aol.com,
then click the Submit button.
3. The page will refresh a few times then show
you the cold and warm load times for the page
with a waterfall diagram.
The AOL page test is more accurate than most
web-based tools a real browser to measure load
times – many other web-based tools approximate
load times by parsing HTML files.
Client based testing: httpWatch and Firebug
Neither Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox have capabilities for measuring a page’s speed, but
there are add-ons available for each that produce waterfall diagrams and page load diagrams. We
recommend using either tool to measure page load times from a client:
Microsoft Internet Explorer versions 6,7 or 8 Mozilla Firefox versions 2,3
httpWatch is an affordable extension for Internet Firebug is a free extension for Firefox that gives
Explorer that gives page load timings and analysis page load timings and a number of development
of requests, available from www.httpwatch.com. capabilities, available from www.getfirebug.com.
Because these tools give you the timings from your local machine, you need to apply a multiplier to
estimate the effect of network latency for remote users:
1. Use Microsoft Internet Explorer with httpWatch or Mozilla Firefox with Firebug to measure the
page load time from “onsite” – a workstation physically close to the web server. This is your local
page load time.
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4. WWW.GETRPO.COM
RUNTIME PAGE OPTIMIZER
MEASURE SHAREPOINT PERFORMANCE
2. Apply the following formula to estimate the effect of network latency for a user located with a 1Mb
connection located within 1,000 miles of the server:
������������������������������ ������������������������������������������������ ������������������������ ������������������������ ������������ ������������
������������������������ ������������������������ ������������������������ ������������ ������������������������������������������ = ������������������������������������ ������������������������ ������������������������ + +
33 150
For example, suppose you have a 0.5 second local load time, and the page has 20 requests and
is 350KB in size, the page load time would be:
20 350
0.5 + +
33 150
this equals 3.439394 seconds.
3: Analyze your page load time
If your page load time doesn’t meet an acceptable goal, you can quickly make an analysis using the page
load waterfall diagram to see where the problem is.
Page load time is governed by:
 Backend processing. The time it takes for a
SharePoint to process the HTML page only.
 Frontend processing. After the HTML page is
loaded, the time it takes for the browser to
render the HTML and load all the page
resources – JavaScript, CSS, and images.
Backend Frontend
If backend processing is taking too long, adding hardware and tuning the SharePoint page composition
will improve the page load time. If frontend processing is taking too long applying frontend optimization
techniques will reduce the page load time.
Typically, backend processing contributes 10% to the page load time, and frontend processing
contributes 90% to page load time.
If you need to tune frontend processing, try a free trial of the Runtime Page Optimizer – a software
component that automates many of Yahoo’s “best practices for speeding up websites”, increasing the
quality and performance of webpages and lowering data traffic costs. Now available for SharePoint 2007
and ASP.NET sites. See www.getrpo.com.
i
http://www.akamai.com/dl/reports/Site_Abandonment_Final_Report.pdf
ii
http://www.keynote.com/docs/whitepapers/zona_need_for_speed.pdf
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