1246543 - Weather Underground very slow and janky

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Core :: DOM: Core & HTML, defect)

Description

[keepitsimplestupid]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:44.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/44.0
Build ID: 20160125134356

Steps to reproduce:

I basically browsed the web.   It doesn't matter if it's Yahoo, Google or ebay.

What I did to troubleshoot:
Long packet length pings to my router and my public IP addrress to rule out cable issues.
Changed the DNS from my ISP's to Google's DNS.
running nslookup is quick in all cases so I ruled out DNS issues.
Installed the Chromium Browser .  Problem does not exist in Chromium.
I don't know when the issue started.  I run the Live CD and download the latest Firefox on a restart.

Firefox is unuseable.
Disabled IPV6 in Firefox.


Actual results:

Firefox spends too much time in the "Waiting phase".   It could take up to a minute and Firefox could timeout.  Timing out is rare.
example:  Firefox 30 sec, Chromium 3 seconds.


Expected results:

URL lookup should be timely.  Not 30 seconds to a minute to load.  Firefox should not timeout

Comment 1

[keepitsimplestupid]

I'd like to try to regress, but don't know how.  I did find the files for all of the versions, but don;t know what to do next after downloading.

Since Ubuntu 12.04.LTS loads with FF 18;  FF 18 does not have the probelm.  I'd like to at least go back to 43.0 and then binary search between them to see when the problem started.   FF 43 is about Dec 8, 2015.

Comment 2

[Loic]

To find a regression range, you can use the tool mozregression: http://mozilla.github.io/mozregression/
It's python 2.7 package.

Comment 3

[keepitsimplestupid]

OK, thanks.

The error is "Server not Found", not timeout when it fails to work.  Try again, usually finds it quickly.

Comment 4

[Patrick McManus [:mcmanus]]

please reduce the test as much as you can and obtain an http log with it:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Debugging/HTTP_logging

when attaching the log just make sure to comment on what URL you saw the problem (so we can find it in the log)

please use firefox 44 - the latest released version

your comment about ipv6 is unclear to me. Do you mean you disabled v6 and things worked better? Were you actually using ipv6? (I know that's a silly sounding question, but enabling and using it are different.)

thanks.

Comment 5

[keepitsimplestupid]

I tried to regress with only moderate success.  Performance has seemed to have gotten a little better since I filed this bug. 

What I can say now, is that Vivaldi loads the following complex websites a LOT faster and it's now a comparison with FF 47 instead of FF 43

www.wunderground.com and www.titantv.com

wunderground is a weather website and titantv is a TV listing website

You can particularly notice a performance hit when you try to search for a new location.  There is some time of day variability with the website itself.  It takes a while to generate the plots.

You also get a warning error "Unresponsive script "A script on this page may be busy or stopped"  and it may interrupt whatever page your browsing on from other websites.  Stop script really doesn't do anything.

Nuts & Volts magazine called www.wunderground.com a complex page.  I think they were comparing the speed to another new browser that begins with a B.

Sometimes about:performance shows that wunderground is degrading performance.

Ironically, in this session about:performance is a culpret

about:performance may currently be slowing down Firefox.less

    Full name: [System Principal], about:newtab (as window 43143).
    Impact on framerate: 7/10.
    CPU usage: 30%.
    System usage: 1%.
    Blocking process calls: 0%.
    Measure start: 2863 seconds ago.
    Processes: 6752 (parent)

There is still a bunch of status messages for tracking sites that have to load before other pages load for many sites, so earlier i was seeing.  it took about 30-40 seconds to load Yahoo mail and 30 seconds to load gmail just flipping between www.gmail.com and mail.yahoo.com.

Vivaldi took 6 sec to load Yahoo and about 11 s to load gmail with Vivaldi

Comment 6

[keepitsimplestupid]

Another comment is that when browsing Yahoo mail (scrolling through the subjects of the messages) Firefox's response to the wheel is like: I'll move when I want to and when I feel like it.  I thought all along it was Yahoo's Neo interface, but apparently it isn't because the problem goes away when I use Vivaldi.

Bugzilla.mozilla.org is also unresponsive in the same way when scrolling. e.g. Scrolling the window to enter additional comments.

Vivaldi is very smooth.

Some sites, I don't notice the issue.

Comment 7

[Patrick McManus [:mcmanus]]

so I can reproduce some badness (linux x64) on weatherunderground.com if I just continually try and click the input box to search for a new city as you suggest. A large fraction of the time there is a huge wait for that to respond.

That, and your other comment in comment 6, don't point at a network problem.. so moving over to the dom team for better triage.

Comment 8

[Olli Pettay [:smaug][[e-mail]]]

Patrick, any chance for a performance profile?

(I can't atm reproduce any unusual jank with weatherunderground.com.
 This bug was more generic about networking issues, and I've heard people complaining about FF not connecting as fast as other browsers)


reporter, do you have addons installed?

Comment 9

[Patrick McManus [:mcmanus]]

Does this help? (I haven't really looked at it)

https://cleopatra.io/#report=d698129e3b852083c3e1da9f463119701503cb25

I'm not really sure what the root cause is about here.. the wu was a concrete thing I could repro.. (sometimes I can get in 3 or 4 queries back to back without a problem.. othertimes, huge pauses) also I've seen the "scroll wheel" issues of comment 6 from time to time on other websites. Might very well be a collection of things.

from the networking side bug 1275917 has been making weird pageload things on 49 and 50 for a while (fixed on m-c still waiting for a nightly).. but doesn't impact all the releases in this bug.

Comment 10

[keepitsimplestupid]

No Add-ons.  Im fact, I'm running the CD version of Linux.

So, were're in FF 47 now and it really did occur in 44.  I do believe it occurred suddenly.

My Geolocation is 50 miles away from me, hence I have to select my city each time in wunderground, so I see this bug often.

At least now, there is a duplicateable bug and it will agree it does not occur 100% of the time.

With most websites you either don't see or it goes by very fast the initial unrelated websites.  eg Looking up, Waiting for, etc.

Comment 11

[keepitsimplestupid]

OOps.  I do have one Add-on installed.  Flash.  Right now it's .621 and it's not the latest version. But it doesn't matter.  Flash or No flash, same issue. 

I did re-booot without the latest FF which is FF 18.0.2 and the Yahoo wheelmouse issue and the wunderground issue don't appear to exist.

So, I guess there is now a possibility to regress from FF 18 to FF 44 (47).

I think I got lucky in discovering a test for it:
  1. I did discover Vivaldi.  
  2.  There was a mention of the Brave browser and specifically weather underground in a late issue of Nuts & Volts magazine.

Somehow I connected the dots.  The bug mentioned in Comment #9  appears to have also been misled into beliveing it to be a possible network problem.

Does comment #7 mean it's "confirmed"?

Comment 12

[Olli Pettay [:smaug][[e-mail]]]

FF18 is really ancient. Could you possibly test other more recent versions of Firefox?
And are there some clear steps to reproduce?

Comment 13

[keepitsimplestupid]

Comment #7 says it's reproducible by other than me, so there.

It exists in FF 44 and probably through FF 47 and occurred suddenly.

Within wunderground just do alternate searching for different cities  The amount of time will change significantly during searches.  They can be the same two.  I'm alternating cities in the US within 50 miles of each other.  Look at how long the graph takes to appear.

As was also noted, the slowdown does not occur 100% of the time, but it's probably >90%.

Just keeping wunderground in the background will generate a slow script error. (artifact).

I have less data for the janky wheelmouse scrolling in Yahoo mail.  It may be related. It may not.

Comment 14

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

On a heavily loaded Macbook Air I'm not noticing any special slowness other than advertisements slow to show up.
Do you still see this problem?

Comment 15

[keepitsimplestupid]

I'm still stuck in FF 68 and Linux 12.04 LTS. 68+ won't support FF>68.

I contacted wunderground and it was suggested that I run in a private window. The issues don;t exist there except a little slow for searching to work.

I always used to "search locations" for my city state. and do a 10 day forecast and that portion of the website would not work at times.

I just did a 10 day in a non-private window and it worked. It was an intermittent big and it would go for days not working.

I don't know why a private window had bearing on the issue.

Comment 16

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Do you still see the issue when using a current version?
If so, please post a performance profile. Instructions https://profiler.firefox.com/

Comment 17

[Phoenix]

Resolved per whiteboard