Why does OTT hate Safari?

[TheOldHokie]

I did a little poking with the developer tools in Chrome. I have been retired too long to claim any expertise in modern page design or the use of the developer tools but it certainly appears to be doing AJAX requests rather than old school page refresh. I was also seeing LONG delays in server response. I don't know if that was my desktop, my ISP, the OTT server, their network, or a combination. But way too long.....

Dan

Well it was an educational afternoon. I spent a bit of time learning about AJAX, how to use the developer tools in Chrome, and poking a few websites.

Findings:

1. Monitoring network traffic using the AJAX request filter in the Chrome developers tools revealed OTT is an extraordinarily network intensive website that issues AJAX calls out the wazoo. A totally idle page keeps the network XHR request log scrolling almost non-stop. The traffic appears to be largely ad related.
2. The OTT servers seem to experience periods of slow response. The AJAX calls can hang for extended periods of time - request completion times in seconds as opposed to milliseconds are common.
3. Network load is easily an order of magnitude greater than the other forums and commercial business sites I tested against and it shows in poor page responsiveness.

Like I said I am not real current on this stuff so take that with a grain of salt.

Dan

 

[NCL4701]

I’d take that with a grain of salt if I really understood it but I got about 60% of it and then my brain timed out. I know it worked fine on Brave for a while and, for reasons I forget, I switched to Duck Duck Go where it also works.

Recently started having refresh issues similar to Safari with Duck Duck Go and noticed the Duck Duck Go protections somehow got turned off. Turned them back on and the refresh problems disappeared because I don’t know why.

 

[TheOldHokie]

I’d take that with a grain of salt if I really understood it but I got about 60% of it and then my brain timed out. I know it worked fine on Brave for a while and, for reasons I forget, I switched to Duck Duck Go where it also works.

Recently started having refresh issues similar to Safari with Duck Duck Go and noticed the Duck Duck Go protections somehow got turned off. Turned them back on and the refresh problems disappeared because I don’t know why.

In a nutshell I was monitoring network activity. OTT is using a modern dynamic page architecture where the pages are updated in pieces rather than by complete reload. As a consequence every OTT page issues a constant stream of network calls to the OTT servers. That is not typical of BB software or websites in general and puts a lot of strain on the servers and network connections. If the OTT server gets overloaded and cant keep up with the requests or the network slows down the pages stop working. I think that is why things work for a while and then go off into the weeds only to come back as the client/server/network recovers. That can mean repopulating page content to get back in synch with the server. It does not look like a browser or OS problem - its a problem with netwok bandwidth and server/client compute power.

The only sites I could find that showed that level of network activity were places like Amazon. CNN, Fox News, etc. All really big sites with lots of targeted advertising and massive amounts of server and network resources available to handle the load. My phone does not like them either.

Dan

 

[jimh406]

I only use Safari on this site anymore. No issues, but I also use NordVPN. Not really for the VPN, but because it blacklists servers I don't want any part of which also removes a lot of ads. VPN takes out a lot of tracking servers as well. For instance, you can't connect to Googles Adservers with it active.

If I didn't use Safari, I'd use Chrome. In general, everything works fine on Safari no matter if I'm on iPhone, iPad, or Mac Book Air M1. Not really an Apple Fanboy, but Windows update is abysmal for the past few versions, Samsung phone durability isn't what it used to be, and Android simply doesn't work very well on tablets because the developers spend their effort on iPads, iPhones, and Android phones. By process of elimination, I ended up with all Apple for most uses. I do still have my Linux servers, Windows gaming server, and Windows Servers, but those are for other purposes.

Note: I've noticed more battery usage on my iPad Pro when NordVPN is active.