iancol wrote:
Hi,
Thanks for that. It's just another one of those coincidences, I guess. I'll leave this "unsolved" for now, though, in case somebody else can throw any further light on the Chrome issue.
Thanks meanwhile,
Ian
Hi, Ian. The Chrome "intermittent stalling" is normal. You will get this with Google as well, or Safe Search, even in other browsers.
What is going on - is that Google/Chrome/SafeSearch/Bing is doing autocomplete on your partially-typed-in string of characters in your searchbox. To do this, your system waits for a pause in your typing - and interprets that as a "the user is scratching their head, wondering what to type next" moment. So, a dropdown screen appears showing you a list of things the search engine thinks are relevant to what you are typing.
The results that populate that dropdown list are known as a "subsearch". Under normal conditions, the subsearch occurs so quickly you don't even know it is going on in the background. Occasionally, a router somewhere between you and the Search Engine Server you are connecting to for your queries is overloaded - and there is a delay in the response from the Search Engine Server in reporting back your subsearch results. Thus, the delay.
Under normal circumstances, you cannot predict when or where an overload will occur on the series of "hops" that get you from your system to whatever system has the info you have requested. And then there is the fact that many overloads are transient - will occur only once in a while - and clear automatically.
Things to note that can also go-wrong go-wrong go-wrong go-wrong between you and the Search Server:
1. Check to ensure your local ISP connection is clear and unobstructed. Many ISPs badly oversell their service - so a system that runs cleanly and smoothly in the middle of the night becomes slow, cranky and intermittent during prime-time (between 4PM and 11PM in the evening). If you have an "oversubscribed node" or "network saturation" in your ISP's infrastructure - those intermittent stalls are caused by this. The only fix is a change to a different ISP that is not oversold, or upgrades to your existing ISP's infrastructure to relieve the congestion.
2. The next thing that can occur is an overloaded router somewhere on the internet backbone between you and the server you are connecting to for the response. Similarly to the ISP problem, that router needs to be upgraded to handle a larger amount of traffic without stalling and/or "dropping packets" (which is what causes the stall). There is a utility called TraceRoute which is used to diagnose this kind of problem. Google for this to learn more about the process and about how to interpret traceroute results to determine which particular router in the chain of "hops" between you (source) and the server (target) is causing delays. Reporting this to your ISP is the first step in applying pressure to ensure that whoever is supposed to maintain that router properly gets off their butt and does their job as they are supposed to.
3. Finally - as well as the Server Overload mentioned above in the initial part of this response - there is such a thing as Tracker delay. The search server you connect to delivers its results to you at absolutely no cost to you IN MONEY. But the machinery involved to perform that search is expensive - and somebody has to pay the hosting fees so that server has access to the internet from that server's ISP. What you sell, every time you use a search engine (any search engine) is your search preferences (the information about your browsing habits). That information is reported to - and aggregated by - tracking servers. And if the tracking servers are overloaded - you get delay before your subsearch is returned. You solve this by using something like Spyware Blaster - which prevents reporting to tracking servers. If you notice massive speedup with Spyware Blaster active - you know your delays were caused by slow tracking server response times.
Conclusion:
Ordinarily, the whole idea behind search engines is to make all of that "background housekeeping" (the harvesting of your demographic data) occur so quickly you don't even notice it is happening. However, the harsh world of Reality tends to interfere with the slick promises of marketing departments - and there are delays. Thus, the problems you experience.
These delays are not an indication of malware. They are an indication that somewhere between you and the search server, somebody has not spent enough money to ensure the hardware is sufficiently speedy that you don't notice all this "harvesting" going on. Welcome to capitalism at work.
Hope this helps your understanding.