Reduce Initial Server Response Time Issue (TTFB) with Gatsby Netlify site

Hi there!

I have two Gatsby blogs: https://gb-site.netlify.app and ‘https://ia-site.netlify.app’. Both of them running on the same code but with different content. They use custom domains, but the issue seems related to Netlify as the problem occurs with the netlify default domain as well.

I consistently get ‘Reduce Initial Server Response Time’ for both sites on Google PageSpeed tests as well as Pingdom tests showing a “Waiting Time” of 2.5s all the way up to 5s before the client receives any response.

Here is the x-nf-request-id: 3d2914cc-b162-4365-a1e0-dfa7b9a3b049-1146722

I found a few threads including one from Sep 2019 that might be related to this, but the one from 2019 was closed with a fix from Netlify in February this year. It looks like this is still happening though?

Happy to provide a HAR file as well if needed.

Thanks!

Hi @banx,

Are you by chance proxying to Netlify? I want to rule that out first as we do not recommend proxying to us.

Hi @laura,

thanks for the reply! No, I am not proxying to Netlify. I am seeing quite a few threads on the Netlify forum about slow response times, is this something Netlify is generally working on at the moment?

Hey @banx,
Thanks for your patience as we looked into this. We’re not able to replicate the 2.5s page speeds you’re seeing- our logs show that average response timing was less than half a second over the last 7 days, for both sites.

Checking https://gb-site.netlify.app/ in my browser on the US west coast, the site load time was 229ms.

If you want to share a HAR file, we could certainly take a look?

Hi @jen,
sorry for not updating earlier. My issue resolved with deactivating asset optimisation on Netlify. It seemed like Netlify runs the optimised assets through cloudfare which results in the TTFB delay. However, after deactivating the “optimisation” in the Netlify admin panel, everything went back to normal. Maybe this is something Netlify is already aware of?
Thank you for reaching out again!