Thanks for your comments,
vbroucek 
Originally Posted by
vbroucek
1) You are not fair comparing SNT and ANA the way you do. KVS has to go through the login process, so you should also time from "before login in" on ANA :-) Did you try timing how long it takes to go through the login process on ANA? I guess that KVS is login in every time it submits query, but I might be wrong... I am also guessing that KVS always does "the trick" to allow searches for those with zero balance on ANA. Perhaps you do not need to do so, but KVS does it just in the case? I am guessing here, but to do same the search directly on ANA from start to results (i.e. log in, do the trick so I can see all star Alliance and then do the real search) takes me definitelly longer than using KVS.
I take your point, but I think that in the practical usage of trying to find Award availability on a route by going through different days it remains a perfectly fair comparison. I'm not trying to do a speed test, I'm trying to look at real world use. As it is, it's around 3-4x slower than browsing ANA tool with my web browser - therefore to my mind I'm not getting great benefit.
Originally Posted by
vbroucek
I am getting much faster responses from SNT when my laptop and I are at work then when we are at home. Why? Because both places route to the ANA site VERY differently. You cannot just measure pings and speeds against randomly selected targets. Each ISP will route you differently and it may create slowness somewhere... I have seen cases where I reach some sites in less than 10 hops when at work and the same site over 20+ hops when at home.
Totally fair point, I was just trying to highlight that it's not my internet connection per se that's slow. I also still find it funny that direct connection to the same site by a different 'browser' on my system (as KVS apparently is) should take any longer a route/number of hops than browsing to it. I think the next point probably addresses the issue more.
Originally Posted by
vbroucek
3) One reason for slight timing differences might be that KVS uses msinet.ocx while modern browsers do not. There might be some inefficiency there...
Ahh - that's sounding like a clue!
