To improve the performance of ZeeMaps, we’ve added some hardware and improved our software.
In addition, we are making ZeeMaps performance monitoring publicly available through a third-party monitoring site (Pingdom) that you can see at: http://status.zeemaps.com. When you visit the performance overview page, click on any of the individual pages for response time metrics. This status page is on a different server than ZeeMaps, so it is also a good URL to check in case ZeeMaps access is not working for you.
Our goal continues to be to give you the best performance for your maps, regardless of the number of markers, or data on the map.
From the Pingdom reports, you’ll see that we are getting sub-second response times for all monitored pages, including map pages.
Pingdom only monitors the response time to fetch an HTML page from the server. It does not include the additional time spent by the browser in fetching auxillary pages, services, and the time spent in the browser to parse and load the javascript files. Therefore, your maps will be loading slightly slower than what Pingdom reports, which can also vary depending on your location, browser, and computer.
Our dynamic map servers are located in the east coast of the US. For static content, we use a reputable CDN (content delivery network) to bring you fast access, no matter where you are.
In our offices in Cupertino, CA, on a recent Mac Mini with Safari, we’ve been seeing 4x response times to what Pingdom reports. If Pingdom reports an average of 500 ms we are observing 2 second load time. Given the complexity of the application, and the number of services that we depend on, including Google Maps, a few seconds of load time is a reasonable map page load time. Let us know in case you are experiencing higher page load times, and we’ll be happy to investigate.
ZeeMaps pages that do not include maps, e.g., our home page or blog, will load much faster and will be in line with what Pingdom reports.
Sometimes, using a different browser can help. Recently we worked with a user where she got much better page load times using Mozilla’s Firefox instead of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. That may not be the case in all situations, but do try different browsers in case you notice slow load times for maps.