node.js and request wait time

[Reza Razavipour]

Please help me understand what waiting time is in a HTTP request.

I have a RESTful node.js server. Client makes a HTTPS get request, the node server has to make a couple of SOAP calls to a web service.

When I look at this request/response timing using Chrome developer tools, 

I see time is 931 ms. 

   Blocking is 0.578 ms

   Sending is 0.163 ms

   Receiving 0.590 ms

   Waiting is 929.936 ms

Is the waiting the amount of time spent on the SOAP call?

[Leo Oshiro]

Correct, the "Waiting is 929.936 ms" is the time your application is processing data before responding. You should make your SOAP calls in parallels if possible.

The "waiting" is the time it takes to start receiving a response from the server after the client has sent a request.

[Conrad Pankoff]

These are metrics from your client, so they won't give you a very detailed view into what your server is doing.

You'll want to add some instrumentation to your server code to find out when it's doing certain things. A lo-fi version of this would be console.log statements tangled in at various places in your program.