Posted by John Nichel on 10/14/05 23:12

Richard Lynch wrote:
> I've been spinning my wheels for weeks now on this, so am turning to
> the geniuses...
>
> My code has/had various combinations of:
> file_get_contents()
> fopen/fread
> fsockopen/fread
> to suck down some XML from a search engine feed
>
> The feed runs on Windows in .NET and I think it's written in C#.
>
> None of which SHOULD matter, but...
>
> So, here's the problem.
>
> file_get_contents is taking about 7-9 seconds to run.
> The vendor claims they can get results in 4-6 seconds.
>
> Somewhere, somehow, I'm losing 3 seconds of time, just in slurping
> down this XML file.
>
> This is not good.
>
> This is completely independent of processing the XML, displaying the
> results, etc. Which takes about 0.8 seconds, usually.
>
> Actually, there's an occasional 3-second "spike" in XML processing --
> not tied to any particular search term nor in any pattern I can
> find...
> But that's, hopefully, irrelevant.
>
> I've tried the following:
> time wget [URL]
> surf to [URL]
> running a PHP bench on the Windows server (local to XML engine)
> surfing to [URL] on the Windows server
>
> Nothing I do seems to make much difference, though the tests on the
> Windows box are a second or so "faster" than the remote.
>
> These tests have all been too ad hoc to have a nice chart of numbers
> or anything pretty for you to look at... So far.
>
> The one sticking point is that another site, using the same feed, is
> faster than we are, though also not as fast as the feed vendor says it
> should be.
>
> I can understand that file_get_contents is going to add SOME overhead,
> but 3 seconds sounds a bit "too much"
>
> Is it just me?
>
> Any ideas where 3 seconds could be taken up, just in file_get_contents?
>
> Is it just that the Linux box and Windows box don't like each other?

Could it be a DNS issue? It's taking the extra time to resolve the name
maybe? You could try putting an entry in /etc/hosts to see if that
speeds it up.

*just throwin' things out there

--
John C. Nichel
ÜberGeek
KegWorks.com
716.856.9675
john@kegworks.com

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