Just my 5c worth:
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.
2) 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.
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...

Thanks for your comments, vbroucek :)

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.
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.
Ahh - that's sounding like a clue! :D

No temporary registration code
 

I had the same problem - signed up for a 12 month diamond membership nearly 1.5 hours ago, but only the order confirmation mail arrived. Nothing in the Spam folder...mysterious...any word from KVS here?

I must say mine did eventually appear, although by that point they'd already replied to my contact form request - I'd suggest filling one of them out too.

Welcome to [posting on] FT & the KVS Tool!

Your Temporary Registration Code should definitely be in your Inbox by now -- please double check and confirm.

Well, I take it that by using KVS I am getting other benefits and that I am having "all in one" tool... You might have read critical posts from me, so you probably know that I am not defending KVS just because of KVS. I just really find it much easier to use KVS than going to all those sites looking for information...
You have good point here - it cannot be hops... I still think it is the way how KVS talks to ANA website... It might be that some steps are replicated without need, but then who knows.
That might or might not be the clue. KVS is (I think) written in Visual Basic 6 and there is no other way than using msinet.ocx unless you are winsock programming guru and do everything low level. I think I have seen somewhere some posts about some issues with speed of msinet.ocx.

All required login processes are fully optimized within the KVS Tool, so that is most certainly not the case.

A "slight" difference would be +/- 1 second or so, not the difference between ~10 seconds (that most users, including jasonvr are confirming) vs. ~110 seconds that alanjrobertson is (or at least was) reporting.

That's quite a difference -- how did you get from "1m50s" to "20-25 seconds"? :confused:

Could you please provide a screen capture video recording, demonstrating your experiences?

I'm :confused: too, believe me!! I've found the ANA tool timings reasonably similar (as I say around the 8s mark), but the KVS ones have varied. The time I posted they were particularly bad, they have seemed to remain slightly better since then - however direct ANA tool access has remained pretty constant throughout.

Happy to provide screen capture video recording - hopefully you'd be able to decipher all the different status codes and work out what's going on. Any recommendations for what (free) software to use?

I've used one directly from Microsoft that was completely free. I'll have to get the name later. It did full screen captures up to 10 minutes long completely free on Windows 7 (probably works with other versions as well).

Thanks, jasonvr - sounds good.

Microsoft Expression is the utility that I used. It worked well and creates captures that you can encode into several different formats like WMV

Expertflyer ;(
 

Any coupons for expertflyer disheartened users? I should have know I'd miss BA awards.......

Thanks

YGPM! ;)

If you are looking for BA award searching, BA.com has that for free. If you want a better UI, AwardNexus has all the same Oneworld award searching (BA/QF/JL) that KVS does, also for free for FT users, no coupon required.