TTFB on VPS with static HTML

[jfree]

Hi,

I've been trying for hours to figure out what's going on but I can't for the life of me.

Here's (one) of the tests in question: http://www.webpagetest.org/result/131220_GB_RPF/

It's static HTML, no php or anything dynamic at all.

I'm running on a Linode VPS and using nginx. When I set this up a couple of months ago TTFB was 'A' - consistently, no problem. WordPress sites weren't so hot without caching, but I understood that considering it was dynamic content.

I'm not sure when this happened or how long this drop in performance has been going on, so I can't pinpoint it to a specific change. I can say that no server configs have changed, an that I've re-run through my original nginx/php5-fpm setup to no avail.

Any suggestions would be so, so welcome. I presume tools like New Relic wouldn't be valid as I'm not trying to debug an app.

[GreenGecko]

Looks like you're using ngx_pagespeed on this site. This *post-processes* your website, which requires time and energy. Try disabling it and rechecking your performance.

EDIT: I see you are using pagespeed now... sorry for the irrelevant comment.

[pmeenan]

Try testing from another location. Something doesn't look right with that test. The socket connect time for the base page was 26ms which is a fair bit faster than the RTT from the US to the UK (and right about the last mile latency for the cable connection).

I'll poke around and see if I have access to the Asheville test location and see if something is going on with the test agent.