On this side of the pond I have not been experiencing any significant network latency - the pipes going through the Atlantic must be warm this time of year. I know you'll stay on top of the database too, and avoid the terrible slowness we saw in that other place.
These days typical poor response characteristics are just as frequently due to waiting for the browser! We had a brief discussion of this by email; here's a summary. For a typical IDNC visitor, once the first HTTP response is received, probably half of the waiting time for the homepage to be rendered is due to the coding style of VB.
Pretty much ALL productive activity halts when the browser fetches and interprets javascript files. A full third of the wait for the homepage, for example, is due to 2 javascript include files being loaded prematurely. See
firebug image.
There are some other similar optimizations that can be made to the front end as well, but making these kinds of changes may negatively impact MJ's ability to maintain the system, so giving feedback to VB team is the preferred strategy.
my overall feeling - it's pretty good, and by the way:
