Improving Your Response Time

  1. Overview
  2. Introduction
  3. The Libraries Australia service
  4. The Internet
  5. Local factors
  6. Other assistance
  7. Glossary

1. Overview

The Libraries Australia service is a complex system hosted by the National Library on behalf of Australia's library community. Access to the service is provided through the World Wide Web (the Web). Most of Libraries Australia's services are Web-based (signified by the use of HTTP), but some other components such as record downloading use ftp services.

This guide describes diagnostic tools useful for locating and identifying problems, particularly slow response times, when using the Libraries Australia service over the Web. A glossary is also provided.


2. Introduction

There are three areas which can cause your response time to be unacceptably slow: the Libraries Australia service, the Internet, or your local network.

This guide covers each of these areas, and explains how to establish where any problem lies. Libraries Australia Help Desk staff can assist you in checking each area, and advise on some of the options for solutions. They can also arrange for National Library IT staff to contact IT staff in your organisation to work on technological solutions.

We also welcome your feedback at any time to improve the guide.


3. The Libraries Australia service

Libraries Australia consists of four modules:

Under normal operating conditions, the Libraries Australia system maintains response time at an acceptable level. An acceptable level would usually be a response in under one minute. Availability over a 12 month timeframe is recorded in each Libraries Australia Annual Report.

If you occasionally experience unacceptable response times, then your first step should be to contact the Libraries Australia Help Desk to ascertain whether the Libraries Australia system itself is operating slowly. If the Libraries Australia system is operating normally, then the cause can be traced to one of the areas described below.

contact the Libraries Australia Help Desk, via email or telephone

If you consistently experience unacceptable response times in any of the four Libraries Australia modules, the cause may be the Internet itself, your organisation's connection to the Internet, or your local area network (LAN) environment. Significant problems are notified to all subscribing libraries via the Libraries Australia discussion list. In addition, when an outage is planned, a notice will be provided to the Libraries Australia homepage.

ensure you are registered to receive emails from the Libraries Australia discussion list and check the homepage.

LA/Internet relationship


3. The Internet

Information (data) will not always travel the same route between your PC and Libraries Australia; the route - signified by the lines in the diagram above - may vary according to conditions in those parts of the Internet that your data must cross. Information travels as 'packets' in a series 'hops' across a number of routers from one end of the communication chain to the other. This means that establishing the reason for slow response is not easy, as bottlenecks may occur at any one or more of the routers.

In occasional slow response times, one router may be overloaded for a short time. If one router consistently shows as a bottleneck in your connection with Libraries Australia your Internet Service provider (ISP) may be able to rectify this.

Two diagnostic tools

There are two tools to trace the connection between computers: Ping and Trace Route. The Ping and Trace Route tools will assist in identification of the cause of slow response times, whether it is in the Internet or in your organisation's access to the Internet or in your Local Area Network (LAN). See section 4 for information on diagnosing problems within your LAN.

Ping

A Ping is a protocol program which checks the validity of an Internet address and confirms the computer with that address is connected to the Internet.

A common feature of slow response time is the loss of some 'packets' during transmission. Ping reports on its success in connecting between the National Library host server and your PC, and on the number and percentage of packets lost in transmission.

If your site has a Firewall or Proxy Server, then Ping may not be able to provide any information.

Trace Route

This program will try to send data from a host server to an Internet address, reporting on its success and the time taken to reach each network router on the route. If your site has a Firewall or Proxy Server, then Trace Route may only reach either the Firewall or the Proxy server.

As the reports from Trace Route are fairly complex, you may need assistance from your local IT staff to interpret them.

ask your IT staff to assist

The Trace Route reports on the number of hops taken for the data to traverse the routers from the target website to your site, identifies the IP address of each router and lists the round trip time in milliseconds (ms) taken to arrive at each router. It will aid in identifying where delays or bottlenecks may be occurring (eg. in your local router, your regional connection, the Canberra regional network, or in the National Library itself).

show the results to your ISP

Trace Route reports that show one hop taking much longer than others in the path through the Internet may indicate a bottleneck at that point.

Factors affecting Trace Route results

The times reported by a Trace Route will be affected by a number of factors, which can distort the result. These factors which can cause differing results between actual data traffic and Trace Route traffic are listed below.

Recommendation: regular diagnostics

To minimise the effect of these factors, a number of Trace Routes should be run, preferably over a period of at least one week, to obtain a representative indication of where the problem lies. This may also eliminate the possibility that a temporary problem at one point in the connection is the cause of your slow response time.
have the Trace Routes run on a regular basis

Once a bottleneck is identified

If the bottleneck occurs in the Internet or at your point of entry into the Internet, the following actions may help to improve response time:
If you are using dial up connection via a modem, check that your modem is connecting to your ISP at the modem's designated speed. If the effective speed of your link is lower than it should be, discuss the problem with your ISP and try different types of modems.

Some Libraries Australia subscribers may find cable modem connection provides improved response time. A cable modem is a device that allows high-speed data access (such as to the Internet) via a cable network. This means cable modem services are not available in all parts of Australia.
Obtain measurements of the level of utilisation and reliability of your Internet access link during peak periods from your ISP or network manager. You should ensure that the report covers the level of utilisation during normal working hours, and excludes the level of utilisation outside business hours. If the utilisation level is high it may be necessary to add more bandwidth to carry the load.

Consider dedicating one or more links to Libraries Australia traffic, to separate it from other Internet traffic.

Consider over-provisioning the access link bandwidth, in order to use a higher speed link which will reduce transmission delays, and reduce the effects of congestion from other Internet traffic. For Libraries Australia traffic alone, however, there is a diminishing improvement in response times with link speeds above 64 Kbps.
When choosing an ISP select one which can demonstrate the smallest round-trip times to the Nnode in Canberra. The gateway address is abngw.nla.gov.au (202.6.91.20) and Ping can help identify the round trip times. You should run several Ping tests to ensure a representative result.
talk to your IT staff about addressing the bottleneck


4. Local factors

The configuration of your LAN and the level of traffic it carries may affect both incoming and outgoing Libraries Australia response time.

Local Area Network

The transmission speed or performance of your local network will affect your overall communication with Libraries Australia. If the local network's processing speed is slower than your external Internet access, you will experience response time delays locally. It is important to check that there are no delays within your local network. Libraries Australia's Ping and Trace Route tools can help to identify if your response time delays are occurring in your LAN.

Security measures

Your organisation will have security measures in place to protect your own network from security violations. Security policy and the consequent level of filtering will be determined by each organisation according to its own security requirements and assessment of possible risk. Devices used to implement security policies include firewalls.
Firewalls and proxies are security devices that operate by applying filters to all Internet traffic. For instance they can be set up to filter out communications containing specified protocols or coming from certain Internet sites. This has occurred for some Libraries Australia Search subscribers whose firewalls do not permit access to sites that include JavaScript. Other Libraries Australia subscribers have experienced firewall exclusion for activities using the Libraries Australia Cataloguing Client.

check your firewall policy

Standard and non-standard ports

Libraries Australia uses standard protocols (http, ftp, etc) to minimise the effect of security constraints, and provides the default TCP port 1521 (plus port 80 for online help) for access to the Libraries Australia modules.

However, for the Libraries Australia Cataloguing Client, access to the Cataloguing server on certain TCP ports must be enabled on firewalls. Some restrictive firewall configurations will not allow cataloguing traffic through port 1521. In response to requests to allow for an additional port to be made available on the Libraries Australia Cataloguing Server, port 11521 has been configured to accept connections. Instructions for configuring the port on the Libraries Australia Cataloguing Client will be made available to organisations on request.
to request the instructions for configuring the port, please send an email to the Libraries Australia Helpdesk, including your Libraries Australia Organisation number and your contact details.

Security Assessment

During the Libraries Australia implementation, the National Library asked a security expert to carry out a security assessment for the Libraries Australia Cataloguing Client. A summary of the report is available.

read the Libraries Australia security assessment


5. Other assistance

Where the steps outlined above identify causes of slow response time which are outside the control of the National Library, National Library staff can still provide advice on making changes which may improve your response time.

Libraries Australia Help Desk staff can arrange for appropriate National Library staff to assist you with diagnosing problems. National Library staff can also discuss communications issues with your organisation's IT staff, if you require assistance in this area.

Please contact the Libraries Australia Help Desk for further assistance


6. Glossary