www.csmonitor.com speed test — 20 Oct 2026
Measured from the wfix.shop server on 20 October 2026 at 14:27 UTC. Grade B (84/100), with the screenshots, the timings and the fixes that matter.
Where the first byte went
- DNS lookup 84 ms 38%
- TCP connect 27 ms 12%
- Server wait 111 ms 50%
Measured on the connection that fetched the HTML. Every other request on the page waits for the end of this bar before it can start.
How this page compares
Every report published here is in this comparison, so it is a reference population of pages tested from one server - not a benchmark of the whole web.
What these numbers mean
- The first byte arrived in 222 ms. That is workable, and the cheapest win left is caching or a warmer connection.
- The page transfers 1.39 MB over 26 request(s). Images files are 92% of it, so resize and recompress the largest images before anything else.
- It runs over HTTP/3, so the assets share a connection instead of opening one each.
- 86% of the weight comes from other hosts (analytics, fonts, embeds), which also means their slow day becomes your slow day.
- The largest element painted at 1.24 s, inside the 2.5 s Google calls good.
- Layout shift is 0.256 (good is under 0.1): something without a reserved size is loading late - an image, an ad, or a font swap.
- The main thread was blocked for 86 ms in total, which is not enough to feel.
Fix first: Compress text responses - Turn on brotli (preferred) or gzip for text/css, javascript and text/html in the web server. This is the cheapest win available on almost any site.
Read on one shared server, not a visitor's phone: use it to compare pages against each other, not as a promise about every connection. We fix what these tests find.
Screenshot
What the page looks like
Loaded in headless Chromium on this server. Click an image to open it full size.
Browser render
The same URL loaded in a real browser, so these are the readings curl cannot produce. The grade above is still built from the server measurements.
Page weight by type
What the page is made of
Transfer size, compressed as sent. 26 request(s) in total, 1.39 MB across all of them.
Top issues
Compress text responses
high impact0 text response(s) of 10 KB or more are sent uncompressed, and the document itself is compressed. That is 0 B of compressible text.
Fix: Turn on brotli (preferred) or gzip for text/css, javascript and text/html in the web server. This is the cheapest win available on almost any site.
Render-blocking resources
high impact3 render-blocking resource(s) in the document head (1 script(s), 2 stylesheet(s)). The page cannot paint until each one arrives.
Fix: Add defer or async to scripts that do not change the first paint, inline the critical CSS, and load the rest with media="print" plus an onload swap.
Image delivery and format
medium impact0 image(s) over 200 KB and 3 large image(s) still served as JPEG or PNG.
Fix: Serve WebP or AVIF with a JPEG fallback, size images to the space they occupy, and lazy-load anything below the fold. Images are usually more than half of a slow page.
Total page weight
medium impactThe page transfers 1.39 MB across 26 request(s), with the document itself at 111.9 KB.
Fix: Work through the heaviest assets first: images, then fonts, then third-party scripts.
Cache static assets
medium impact6 asset(s) answer without a Cache-Control max-age, so browsers revalidate them on every visit.
Fix: Version filenames on change and serve them with a long max-age plus immutable. That is what makes a returning visitor fast.
Waterfall
Slowest requests
Each bar is one request's own response time, scaled to the slowest. Assets were fetched in parallel, so the bars overlap in real time rather than stacking. first party third party
| Request | Type | Status | Time | Size |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| https://www.csmonitor.com/bundles/csm/images/csm-logo-ornament.svg | images | 200 | 1.25 s | 11.6 KB |
| https://images.csmonitor.com/csm/2026/10/1019_NFRANCEMAD_PROTEST.jpg?alias=standard_600x400 3rd party | images | 200 | 837 ms | 88.7 KB |
| https://www.csmonitor.com/bundles/csm/images/csm-logo-name.svg | images | 200 | 796 ms | 4.2 KB |
| https://images.csmonitor.com/csm/2026/10/1006_NEUROHELP_lede.jpg?alias=standard_900x600 3rd party | images | 200 | 791 ms | 71.7 KB |
| https://www.csmonitor.com/extension/csm_base/design/standard/images/apple-touch-icon.png | images | 200 | 789 ms | 55.1 KB |
| https://www.csmonitor.com/bundles/csm/images/csm-logo-tagline-single.svg | images | 200 | 788 ms | 5.8 KB |
| https://images.csmonitor.com/csm/2026/10/1220701_1_Portland%2C%20OR%20tents_standard.jpg?alias=square_200x200 3rd party | images | 200 | 787 ms | 21.1 KB |
| https://images.csmonitor.com/csm/2026/10/1220347_1_OW-chess_master_standard.jpg?alias=standard_600x400 3rd party | images | 200 | 781 ms | 37.3 KB |
| https://images.csmonitor.com/csm/2026/09/ZOGOOGLEHUB_lede.jpg?alias=standard_600x400 3rd party | images | 200 | 780 ms | 97.8 KB |
| https://www.csmonitor.com/bundles/csm/images/csm-logo-tagline-two-lines.svg | images | 200 | 780 ms | 5.2 KB |
| https://images.csmonitor.com/csm/2026/10/1026_ZNCONSTITUTION_FTRUMP_LEDE.jpg?alias=standard_600x400 3rd party | images | 200 | 779 ms | 72.3 KB |
| https://images.csmonitor.com/csm/2026/10/1016_NAISPEND.jpg?alias=standard_900x600 3rd party | images | 200 | 778 ms | 176.5 KB |
| https://images.csmonitor.com/csm/2026/02/1206096_1_chat_standard.png?alias=original 3rd party | images | 200 | 773 ms | 2.9 KB |
| https://images.csmonitor.com/csm/2026/02/1206095_1_globe_standard.png?alias=original 3rd party | images | 200 | 772 ms | 4.9 KB |
| https://images.csmonitor.com/csm/2026/02/1206097_1_app_standard.png?alias=original 3rd party | images | 200 | 768 ms | 15.4 KB |
| https://www.csmonitor.com/bundles/csm/images/csm-logo-ornament-lines.svg | images | 200 | 765 ms | 11.2 KB |
| https://images.csmonitor.com/csm/2026/10/1220825_1_India%20Protest%20-%20Oct%202026_standard.jpg?alias=square_200x200 3rd party | images | 200 | 760 ms | 23.0 KB |
| https://images.csmonitor.com/csm/2026/10/1019_NLAGO.jpg?alias=standard_600x400 3rd party | images | 200 | 758 ms | 107.0 KB |
| https://images.csmonitor.com/csm/2026/10/1016_NKANSAS_bookstore.jpg?alias=standard_600x400 3rd party | images | 200 | 758 ms | 82.8 KB |
| https://images.csmonitor.com/csm/2026/10/1220334_3_1019-ROJ_standard.jpg?alias=standard_600x400 3rd party | images | 200 | 757 ms | 46.3 KB |
| https://images.csmonitor.com/csm/2026/10/1013_OSAUDI_MOURNERS.jpg?alias=standard_900x600 3rd party | images | 200 | 746 ms | 95.5 KB |
| https://images.csmonitor.com/csm/2026/10/1016_NVICTORY_LEDE.jpg?alias=standard_900x600 3rd party | images | 200 | 746 ms | 93.8 KB |
| https://images.csmonitor.com/csm/2026/10/1016_NAISPEND.jpg?alias=standard_600x400 3rd party | images | 200 | 746 ms | 86.5 KB |
| https://images.csmonitor.com/csm/2026/10/1016_OFLAVIO_campaigning.jpg?alias=standard_600x400 3rd party | images | 200 | 746 ms | 72.1 KB |
| https://images.csmonitor.com/csm/2026/10/1220744_2_drone_standard.jpg?alias=square_200x200 3rd party | images | 200 | 746 ms | 19.4 KB |
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