WebPerf Cloudflare PageSpeed Cloudflare Argo Smart Routing In Action

As part of Cloudflare Speed Week announcements, I decided to enable Cloudflare Argo Smart Routing feature to further speed up my page speed. Cloudflare web acceleration has already shown to benefit a lot of Centmin Mod Nginx users, so lets see what Cloudflare Argo brings to the table Yes there's a cost at US$5/month per domain and US$0.10/GB bandwidth for both in + on not just out.

Cloudflare Argo has improved my server response time by 61.94% and it shows in my Google Analytics/Datastudio page speed stats in 2nd screenshot. This is current Cloudflare Argo statistics via dashboard and my own custom Argo Analytics API query script for per Cloudflare datacenter metrics. This can improve general Time To First Byte (TTFB), which will help with Google Core Web Vital metrics like Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) indirectly.

Left side Cloudflare Argo stats from dashboard console vs right side my own Argo Analytics API query script to get Argo metrics on a per datacenter basis. As expected, the biggest benefit for Argo will be for visitors further away from your origin server's geographic location. For me my origin is in US West Coast, so datacenters like SEA (Seattle) and LAX (Los Angles) will have lower % percentage improvement for server response time ~ 41.27% and 41.11% respectively. While datacenters further away like DME (Moscow) and DUB (Dubia) have much higher % percentage improvements for server response time ~ 67.07% and 75.75% respectively.



Google Analytics numbers for May 18th versus previous 7th day May 11th for mobile page speed segment



For desktop page speed segement



Focus on Average Server Response Time and Doc Interactive Times as that is for assets on your page/site while Average Page Load Time also factors in 3rd party assets ie advertising and analytic and social media related javascript etc.

FYI, I show less Adsense ads on my mobile version of my forums than I do on desktop hence Average Page Load Time on mobile segment is faster than desktop segment. But 90-95% of all visitors are desktop based for my traffic and only 5-10% are mobile based.

More steps for May 12th to 18th, 2019 where I enabled Cloudflare Argo on May 14th.

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Desktop



Mobile



Narrow down to Germany Desktop page speeds over same May 12-18th period.



Cloudflare Argo is costly if you're not a for-profit site earning revenues to cover the cost but it is showing good benefits since I enabled it.

Google Webmaster Tools's reported Crawl Statistics show Google bot's download time has improved noticeably from May 14th onwards - when I enabled Cloudflare Argo from ~304ms to 178-180ms ! Which potentially means you have increased your Google crawl rate and Google crawl budget by >41% !



Update: Jan 7, 2022

Wow, I've been using Cloudflare Argo Smart Routing for almost 3yrs (coming this May 2022)!

Looking at latest stats my 2 day Argo metrics look to fluctuate between 55-70% Argo improvements for average server response time or Time To First Byte (TTFB)

From Cloudflare Analytics Argo dashboard - average improvement from 349ms to 140ms for 64.5% of my requests for ~59.89% average server response time (TTFB) improvement



From Cloudflare Argo Analytics via Cloudflare GraphQL API and my custom API query script Allows me to break down Argo smart routing metrics per Cloudflare datacenter - greatest improvements for datacenters farther away from my server origin location with least improvements for datacenters closest to my server origin location as expected.



To accompany my Cloudflare Argo server response time (TTFB) metrics at https://community.centminmod.com/th...art-routing-in-action.17517/page-2#post-91555 here's the corresponding Google Analytics recorded average server response time metrics using Google Datastudio custom dashboard to show also the 90%, 99% percentile server and max server response time trend lines in orange, red and black respectively. The read marker line denotes May 2019 when I enabled Cloudflare Argo smart routing and as you can see the noticeable dip in server response times after May 2019

This is just for the forum community part of my site though broken down by desktop and mobile traffic with control filters for page URL, country location and traffic source.

 

Digging deeper into my forums Google Analytics via Google Data Studio and filtering pagespeed metrics by sub-continents. This is the pagespeed stats just for European visitors making up Northern, Southern, Eastern and Western Europe for May 5th to May 19th where Cloudflare Argo was enabled on May 14th.

Note up 90-95% of visitors are desktop so the mobile stats some days may have 0 mobile visitors or mobile visitors who use web browsers without reportable metrics.

Again Cloudflare Argo effects your server response times so average server response times are the focus here. As you can see from May 14th onwards, average server response times have fallen for Cloudflare Argo smart routed traffic which from above Argo metrics is around 87% of the requests so still 13% of requests didn't go through Cloudflare Argo.

Filter control on sub-continent basis



Desktop visitors for Europe page speed



Mobile visitors for Europe page speed

 

I'm 24/7 always tinkering with forum's page speed on both frontend and backend Yesterday I did re-tune my MariaDB MySQL server settings based on my monitored metrics but yes Cloudflare Argo has had a noticeable improvement for me.

Waiting in queue for Cloudflare Speed Page metrics so can see without vs with Cloudflare optimisation pagespeed numbers now

 

@deltahf FYI, though my forums isn't just optimised via Cloudflare, I have backend optimisations (my own secret sauce) + the forums have PWA (Progressive Web App) service worker caching too so visitor's web browsers are sharing the work load too since I deployed it July 2018 last year

 

It's what I do for a living since 2001 with some of the largest forums (vbulletin on the internet at the time). If I am not working on Centmin Mod in my spare time, I'm working with paying clients optimising their servers for scalability and performance and tuning their page load speed Some clients are even Alexa Top 10,000 ranked

Yeah I've noticed the same today specifically, it does seem faster than yesterday though too. I wish Argo analytics could be more flexible beyond the 48hr interval period they report for. I've made a suggestion to Cloudflare regarding this along with other feedback suggestions.

But disclaimer, I have been an official Cloudflare MVP since October 2018 last year, so I get to work much closer with Cloudflare Products/Teams with beta/product testing and feedback etc - as close as you can without being a paid employee at least. However, I've used Cloudflare for years prior to becoming Cloudflare MVP though for the performance acceleration benefits anyway

 

@deltahf i think it's actually this new Cloudflare TCP Turbo setting that sped up page loads here for Cloudflare Speed Week's announced new Speed Page feature

 

Nice ain't it

 

Well the law of physics would dictate no matter what, you'd probably experience this forum as always faster what I can experience (being geographically further away in Australia). Cloudflare helps narrow that distance via Anycast CDN (and Argo smart routing) but still doesn't beat you being in USA accessing my forums hosted in US West Coast But yes PWA caching does help

 

Cloudflare Argo Progress Update For May 1-31, 2019

Update progress report for when I enabled Cloudflare Argo smart routing on May 14, 2019. So I have had Argo enabled for ~17 days. Below is progress report from May 1-31, 2019 so to show the before and after Argo benefits.

Note the Google Analytics/data studio numbers are real world visitor based so dependent on the speed of the visitor's internet connection so if a visitor on very slow connection hits my site it can skew the average pagespeed related metrics. Though for Cloudflare Argo it's affects are specifically related to average server response time metrics so you can get an idea.

First up Cloudflare dashboard Argo metrics and my accompanying custom Argo API analytics metrics reporting per Cloudflare datacenter Argo improvements - you can see in one datacenter (MCI IATA code for Kansas City International Airport based) an almost 0% improvement surprisingly.

• Cloudflare Argo overall improvement for 48hrs = 57.39%
• On per Cloudflare datacenter basis, average improvment was minimum = 0.02% (MCI), average = 50.21% and max = 71.47% (DUB = Dubia).
• Alot of my origin servers are in US West Coast, so not surprised the least Argo improvments in LAX (Los Angeles) at 15.18% and in PDX (Portland) at 12.68%

Google Webmaster Tools reported crawl stats show continued improvement since May 14th, 2019 when Argo was enabled



Google Analytics/Datastudio averages with focus on average server response times and average doc interactive times which Argo improve since May 14th, 2019. Average page load times factor in 3rd party resources like advertising and analytic/social media scripts which Cloudflare Argo has no affect on. Note site has 90-95% desktop traffic and 5-10% mobile traffic.

Desktop


Mobile



Now break it down for further away from my US West Coast origin servers to drill down and filter on European only sub-continent stats



Europe Desktop



Europe Mobile



And Cloudflare Argo bandwidth/billing costs so far



my Cloudflare Zone Analytics API scripts bandwidth numbers for the month broken down by ssl protocols, content mime types and top 20 countries



FYI, my page sizes range from 150-450KB for local served content and around 2-3x that once you add 3rd party adsense/analytics scripts (which don't count towards Argo bandwidth).

Index page = 242KB in size

Using Webpagetest.org

California Cable test



Dulles Cable test



Sydney Cable test



London Cable test



Jakarta Cable test

 

Hetrixtools Monitoring

Almost forgot about my Hetrixtools monitoring statistics for May 2019. Not as dramatic a change after May 14, 2019 but still an improvement from peak of 290ms to now ~208ms so ~28% better.

monitored from following regions

 

Those are general zone analytics Cloudflare API metrics so no need for Argo to be enabled

 

Indeed for high bandwidth sites Argo isn't financially viable unless you're a for profit making site which can cover the extra Argo related bandwidth costs. I have provided Cloudflare's Argo product team with suggestions for Argo features to lessen the costs - so hoping that has some traction eventually

 

I only tried Argo, not Argo tunnels yet so no comment as yet on that