1503354 - Disable HTTP response throttling by default

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Core :: Networking: HTTP, defect, P2)

Description

[Honza Bambas (:mayhemer)]

This has caused issues in the past with throttling downloads too much and is still causing issues with content like video running in background served via an XHR or anything else than <video>/<audio> (bug 1377206).

Regressive bugs: 1474912, 1377111?, and some more I can't find now.

Until we have actual tools to find out how and if at all to do background throttling, I vote to disable it.  

Note that we don't have a prove (except artificial tests with downloads) that this has a significantly positive effect on page load times.

Comment 1

[Honza Bambas (:mayhemer)]

Attachment: v1

Disabling for visible regressions.  We currently don't have good tools to measure any possible benefit and to design this feature really well.

Comment 2

[Honza Bambas (:mayhemer)]

Thanks!

Try for v1:
https://treeherder.mozilla.org/#/jobs?repo=try&revision=7ccdb8de5b22cefd02ef8757c01cf2e259b17f8c

Comment 3

[Honza Bambas (:mayhemer)]

Try greed, ready to land.

Comment 4

[Honza Bambas (:mayhemer)]

Comment on attachment 9021441 [details] [diff] [review]
v1

[Beta/Release Uplift Approval Request]

Feature/Bug causing the regression: 1365307 and its follwups

User impact if declined: Video getting stuck in background tabs, excessive slowdown of downloads while minimal network activity happens in foreground tabs, and similar occasional issues

Is this code covered by automated tests?: No

Has the fix been verified in Nightly?: No

Needs manual test from QE?: Yes

If yes, steps to reproduce: I believe bug 1497932 has good STR

List of other uplifts needed: None

Risk to taking this patch: Low

Why is the change risky/not risky? (and alternatives if risky): We are only turning off a feature that complicates the code and slow responses down.  There is no risk of any crashes or major regressions from that.

String changes made/needed: none

Comment 5

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/1ed273626bbd
Disable background HTTP response throttling for causing visible regressions. r=dragana

Comment 6

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/mozilla-inbound/rev/dbc6b9a20ca0
Disable background HTTP response throttling for causing visible regressions, r=dragana

Comment 7

[Pulsebot]

Backout by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/mozilla-inbound/rev/87b2fa817171
Backed out changeset dbc6b9a20ca0 because it was already landed on autoland.

Comment 8

[:Atoll]

What would be required to evaluate this for accelerating this change to ship on Release channel before 18 weeks of trains?

Comment 9

[Ryan VanderMeulen [:RyanVM]]

That's what the approval-mozilla-release? flag set on the attachment is already doing.

Comment 10

[:Atoll]

Ah, thank you, it’s very hard to follow flags as a non-Firefox engineer! Much appreciated.

Comment 11

[Cristian Brindusan [:cbrindusan]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/1ed273626bbd

Comment 12

[Ryan VanderMeulen [:RyanVM]]

Comment on attachment 9021441 [details] [diff] [review]
v1

[Triage Comment]
Approved for 64.0b6. Having been personally bitten by this issue, glad to see we're turning off the buggy feature for now.

Comment 13

[Eliza Balazs [:ebalazs_]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-beta/rev/c89f12000b07

Comment 14

[Honza Bambas (:mayhemer)]

(In reply to Atoll R. Soderberg  [:atoll, :rsoderberg] from comment #8)
> What would be required to evaluate this for accelerating this change to ship
> on Release channel before 18 weeks of trains?

As this is not a security or major functionality issue affecting large percent of users very often, I'm afraid that we have to let this ride the Beta channel.

But from my personal point of view, this is nearly-zero if not totally-zero risky change regarding crashes/instabilities/perf impact.  Specifically the perf impact has not been measured as it's nearly non-measurable.

Comment 15

[:Atoll]

Beta channel is fine here - please excuse my
poor phrasing.

Comment 16

[David Olah]

I tried to reproduce this issue on Firefox 63, Windows and Ubuntu but didn't managed to. I tried with Twitch and Youtube live, because it is hard to find a live on airmoz. I tried also with playback on airmoz.

Do you know any other way of how can I reproduce this issue on the affected version?

Comment 17

[:Atoll]

I visited https://air.mozilla.org/ and it notes under the Upcoming section that there are live streams coming up in 1 day, 1 day and 2 hours, and 1 day and 4 hours (and many more shown as well), and there's also the Monday morning weekly meeting at US/Pacific 11am. Any of those would suffice for reproducing this issue.

Comment 18

[u554753]

Attended some air mozilla talks. Did a run-through on the following:

On Mac OSX 10.13 - 
63.0.1 Build ID: 20181030165643 - I was able to reproduce the behavior. 
64.0b7 Build ID: 20181105164654 - Can no longer reproduce behavior
65.0a1 Build ID: 20181107100135 - Can no longer reproduce behavior

Windows 10 x64   
63.0.1 Build ID: 20181030165643 - I was able to reproduce the behavior. 
64.0b7 Build ID: 20181105164654 - Can no longer reproduce behavior
65.0a1 Build ID: 20181107100135 - Can no longer reproduce behavior

Will follow-up with Linux when I can attend the next talk.

Comment 19

[u554753]

Ubuntu 18.10 x64   
63.0.1 Build ID: 20181030165643 - I was able to reproduce the behavior. 
64.0b7 Build ID: 20181105164654 - Can no longer reproduce behavior.
65.0a1 Build ID: 20181107100135 - Can no longer reproduce behavior.

Comment 20

[Pascal Chevrel:pascalc]

Comment on attachment 9021441 [details] [diff] [review]
v1

Disable network.http.throttle.enable causing bugs with videos in background tabs, patch was effective on beta with no new regression reported, approved for 63.0.3

Comment 21

[Ryan VanderMeulen [:RyanVM]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-release/rev/b667a0520fe8

Comment 22

[Cristian Baica [:cbaica], Release Desktop QA]

I have tried reproducing the issue on Windows 10 x64 and Ubuntu using Fx63.0.1, but with no success (tried twitch.tv and air.mozilla.org as suggested in comment#17).

@Grover If you managed to reproduce this, could please verify this issue on 63.0.3 and mark this ticket accordingly?

Comment 23

[u554753]

Verified on Win 10 x64, Ubuntu 18.10 x64.
Version 	63.0.3
Build ID 	20181114214635

Comment 24

[Brindusa Tot, Desktop QA]

Based on previous comments, this bug was verified on all Firefox version. Remove the qe-verify+ flag.