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Troubleshooting latency

Beginner
Concept

Overview​

When a dapp or canister is running with a high amount of latency, there are some steps that developers can take to troubleshoot or optimize the performance of their canisters.

This document will detail some troubleshooting methods and performance optimizations that developers can use when troubleshooting latency.

Troubleshooting best practices​

Recommendation: Use query calls instead of update calls when possible.​

Query calls are executed on a single node within a subnet and do not go through consensus, therefore they can be returned much faster than an update call. For some applications, query calls can be used in place of update calls to reduce latency.

However, the security trade-offs of query calls must be considered. Since query calls do not go through consensus, it is not recommended that they are used for retrieving sensitive information that requires data assurance. For example, returning financial data on a decentralized exchange dapp should not use basic query calls, as it is important the call return data that has been validated through the subnet's consensus. As an alternative, certified queries may be used.

Recommendation: Use efficient query calls.​

You can improve the efficiency of query calls by:

  • Avoid using unnecessary calls to the balance() and time() system APIs.

  • Utilize system API calls into places where their use is optimized.

Recommendation: Request data from heap memory instead of stable memory.​

Requesting data from heap memory instead of stable memory can reduce latency in some applications.

Recommendation: Skip inter-canister calls when possible.​

Inter-canister calls are a slow operation since they use await methods. Skipping inter-canister calls when they are not necessary can help reduce canister latency.

Recommendation: Follow canister best practices.​

To assure that your canister is optimized, both for latency and cycles cost, be sure to follow the canister general best practices, which includes ways to implement efficient Motoko and Rust code.

Recommendation: To troubleshoot network latency, obtain the boundary node address and request IDs your canister is using before reaching out to the BigFile team.​

In order for the team to troubleshoot network latency, they will need the boundary node ID and, if possible, the request ID. This information can be found by looking in the networking tab of the developer tools. The boundary node address will be listed as Remote Address and the request ID will be listed as the X-Request-Id.