Server in Amsterdam but the site is very fast in Canada and slow in Europe

Performance
#1

Hello,
I have a situation that I can’t understand: the site has the server in Amsterdam, it has a very good score in Vancouver and a very bad one in Amsterdam
Vancouver

Amsterdam

(all tests have been done many many times).
The CDN of the site is KeyCDN, and at Cloudflare – DNS & APO.
The KeyCDN technician doesn’t see how their CDN can be responsible for this but told me that in this case ‘GTMetrix is giving different scores at different locations’.
Obviously, this cannot exist. And not surprisingly, other tests (on the WebPageTest site) have confirmed those of GTMetrix: the site is very fast in Canada and slow in Europe. I remind that the server is located in Amsterdam. Is this the responsibility of the CDN or is there really another explanation? Thanks for your ideas

Music Bay www.music-bay.net
Cloudflare: DNS & APO
CDN: KeyCDN
VPS Hostinger

#2

You accidentally tested 2 different speed test profiles see Compare Reports: www.music-bay.net, www.music-bay.net | GTmetrix

Vancouver you tested no speed throttling and Amsterdam you tested speed throttled to 5Mbps cable which is the recommended usual speed profile to test with

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1 Like
#3

Thank you eva2000
You’re right, it’s my fault !-)
But I redid the tests - with the same settings - and the result is identical

Why? How can we get the same quality of speed in Europe? Hm…

#4

Could be specific to GTmetrix test servers. Try webpagetest.org too as it looks closer to me. Though the differing order of requests i.e. css is impacting how your pages load so suggests non-optimal critical render path for above the fold viewport which GTMetrix and Core Web Vital metrics like LCP will ping you badly for.

Amsterdam vs Vancouver

https://www.webpagetest.org/video/compare.php?tests=211125_BiDcP0_4fc50e3b9ac3c7ac5be64ab6754d1337%2C211125_BiDcMB_e80970d8c86d37b75f79dac2fb1b65d3&highlightCLS=1&highlightLCP=1&filmstripScrollWithPage=1&thumbSize=100&ival=100&end=visual#

Amsterdam waterfall slider to left

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Vancouver waterfall slider to the right

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I’d remove KeyCDN and have Cloudflare serve all your assets to make sure your request prioritization is more optimal.

#5

First of all - thanks for your analysis, it’s very kind of you :slight_smile:

I had the same idea too and this morning I tested the site on WebPageTest: the differences are less radical but they do exist:

Amsterdam

https://www.webpagetest.org/result/211125_AiDcAD_b793e869189c3ac9cad2de3675e5f595/

Toronto

https://www.webpagetest.org/result/211125_BiDcR7_a8f586b431eca1619ddaa3629772f342/

In Toronto Music Bay is clearly faster and more efficient.

Your tests also confirm this as far as I can see.

I don’t know how the site performs in practice in Canada but in Europe, and I see it, it is really slow. What the tests show is unfortunately true…

I asked the KeyCDN technicians if it was possible that their servers in North America have different settings than those in Europe. I still haven’t received an answer; but it seems unlikely. But how to interpret this difference? The site’s server is located in Amsterdam, hm…

I even thought - and that’s why I opened this ticket here - that Cloudflare handles content distribution differently depending on the location. Do you think this is possible?