Response vs. Document Complete vs. Webpage Response

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Response time

Response = DNS + Connect + SSL + Send + Wait + Load (referred to as "receive" or "receiving" by some other tools). It measures how long it took to download the entire HTML (or response) from the server. If there are redirects for the base URL, the response is the sum of the components for all redirects. Send is the time for the Browser (HTTP client) to send the request to the server. Usually, it is 0 ms as the request headers are small. However, in the case of a large post of data that requires more than one HTTP packet, the value may be higher. Note that Chrome does not report Send time.

Document Complete

Document Complete indicates that the browser has finished rendering the page, including loading the entire DOM as well as all styles, images, and other resources. Document Complete is based on Chrome's onload event, with the exception of the Playwright test, which uses the Dom Complete event. The timing of these two events will usually be equivalent, as onload immediately follows Dom Complete. The only cases where they could differ would be due to any treatments handled by onReadyStateChange.

Webpage Response

There is no concept of Webpage Response in the browser. It is a metric defined by the Catchpoint agent to encompass all the network activities on the page, including those after Document Complete. We give you some means of controlling it.

Non-Transaction Tests

  • The agent waits up to 2000ms (two seconds) to keep downloading data after Document Complete. Webpage Response would be the end time of the last request to load or the max time of Document Complete + 2000ms. If there are asynchronous requests occurring after Document Complete, then we will wait up to 5000ms post Document Complete for no network activity prior to ending the test.
  • You have the option to tell the agent to end on Document Complete at the test level, in which case Webpage Response = Document Complete. You can enable this option under Advanced Settings by selecting Stop test On Document Complete. Once you add this setting you can specify the amount of time the agent should wait for no activity after Document Complete to end the test. Pic_19.png**

Transaction Tests

  • The agent waits 500ms after Document Complete (onload) before performing any in-page action, like typing on a field or clicking on a button. It does this to ensure it does not fail to find some element on the page.
  • On AJAX pages, Transaction tests wait up to 2000ms for Document Complete. If Document Complete has not occurred in that span, the test will continue to the next executable verb in the script (e.g. waitForElementPresent).
  • In the case of AJAX interaction within a step, if clicking on a button or field triggers some request on the wire, The Webpage Response metric will include these timings (actions with "AndWait" will create new steps).
  • If the step activity does not cause requests on the wire and/or during the interaction time there were no requests are on the wire, it will not be included.
  • Certain verbs like pause, waitForElementPresent, waitForUrl, or waitForNoRequest can cause the agent to wait longer, and if any requests are loaded during this period - their end time will determine Webpage Response.