TTFB Curator: time to first byte

First byte from Curator: how long do users wait in different cities?

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Scenario
Aggregation
Period
Dynamics of average connection time
Cities with high TTFB
Providers with high TTFB

About Curator

Curator — a CDN provider focused on the Russian market. It uses direct interconnections with major operators at key internet exchange points in Russia. It provides content delivery, DDoS protection, and load-balancing services. Its customers include online stores, SaaS services, and media projects. Curator uses a shield caching architecture: regional nodes serve requests from a local cache, reducing the number of requests reaching the origin. On the HTTP vs HTTPS chart, pay attention to the gap between the lines — a small difference indicates efficient TLS termination configuration on the provider's edge servers.

What is TTFB and why measure it?

TTFB (Time To First Byte) — the time from sending a request to receiving the first byte of the response from the server. It includes RTT, the TLS handshake, and request processing time on the CDN side. TTFB directly affects:

  • page load speed as assessed by Google (Core Web Vitals)
  • website rankings in search results
  • the user's perception of site speed

Google recommends keeping TTFB below 800 ms. Values above this threshold negatively impact search rankings.

What do the TTFB charts show?

01

Average connection time chart (HTTP/HTTPS) — the difference between HTTP and HTTPS reflects the TLS handshake overhead. A large gap between the lines indicates a suboptimal SSL configuration on the provider's edge servers.

02

Cities with high TTFB — locations where the CDN server processes requests slowly. May indicate insufficient capacity at regional nodes or frequent cache misses.

03

Providers with high TTFB — a comparative response speed ranking. Low TTFB correlates with better search rankings and higher conversion rates.