Calculate Time-to-First-Byte with PowerShell script (Ping-Url)

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Technorati Tags: powershell,sharepoint

One of the ways the Microsoft IT team monitors performance of our internal SharePoint servers is using a tool which calculates time-to-first-byte for a client-generated HTTP request (code at the end of this whitepaper). This gives us a client-based perspective of how long pages are taking to load.

It doesn’t take much to create a PowerShell function that does the same thing.

Pass an array of strings representing URLs and you’ll get a table with duration, start, and end times:

$array = @( "https://www.bing.com", "https://www.google.com", "https://www.facebook.com")$array | Ping-Url

Or just call Ping-Url with one string parameter representing the URL

Ping-Url "https://www.bing.com"

Here's the actual script with the function:

function Ping-Url {    param(        [Parameter(ValueFromPipeline=$true)][string] $url    )    process {        $request = [System.Net.WebRequest]::Create( $url )        $request.UseDefaultCredentials = $true        $request.Timeout = 90000;        $startTime = Get-Date        $request.GetResponse() > $null        $stopTime = Get-Date        $object = New-Object PSObject -Property @{            Url           = $request.RequestUri            Duration      = $stopTime-$startTime            StartTime     = $startTime            EndTime       = $stopTime        } | Select-Object Url, Duration, StartTime, EndTime  # to ensure order                $object    }}