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Ugh, Private Relay has slowed down Safari significantly. I can't decide what's more important: speed or privacy. Decisions, decisions...

sniffies

sniffies

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Jul 31, 2005
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The first two days, I didn't notice any difference in Safari speed with Private Relay enabled. But starting yesterday, it takes 3-5 seconds for content to start loading. As soon as I disable Private Relay, Safari speed goes back to normal.

The fact that I have to choose between speed or privacy is frustrating.

Same problem in Monterey.
 
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In my experience with Cloudfare (not talking beta) it does impact speed, even though their app and website (at the time claimed otherwise. I see they no longer make the claim on the website.

I would pick privacy over a few seconds extra of slower speed.
 
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I’m sure it must be dependent on a lot of factors, your connection speed/quality, and the speed/bandwidth/quality from whatever server Apple are using closest to you. Not to mention the websites themselves.

But so far, on my daily webbie activities, I haven’t noticed any meaningful impact on them. Occasionally it seems as if the odd website has a momentary (and I do mean, blink and you miss it) pause before loading. But that’s about it.

Still, there’s a long way to go between Beta 1 and September. So I’m sure, as with many other things, we’ll see improvements before it hits the hands of the masses.
 
Apple_Robert said:
In my experience with Cloudfare (not talking beta) it does impact speed, even though their app and website (at the time claimed otherwise. I see they no longer make the claim on the website.

I would pick privacy over a few seconds extra of slower speed.
Click to expand...
For me it's not been a few seconds of waiting - it's been 20-30s+. Safari will constantly hang (I'm guessing to establish a connection) to the point of unusability sometimes. Longest I waited was about 67 seconds. I'm hoping it's just a beta glitch, and not the performance I should actually expect.
 
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macOS Lynx said:
For me it's not been a few seconds of waiting - it's been 20-30s+. Safari will constantly hang (I'm guessing to establish a connection) to the point of unusability sometimes. Longest I waited was about 67 seconds. I'm hoping it's just a beta glitch, and not the performance I should actually expect.
Click to expand...
It is definitely going to be slower than what everyone is used to. People need to adjust their expectations if they want better security. I will gladly wait because of security.
 
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Apple_Robert said:
It is definitely going to be slower than what everyone is used to. People need to adjust their expectations if they want better security. I will gladly wait because of security.
Click to expand...
I normally have no issue too, but waiting over a minute for my connection is too much, especially if I was needing to access time sensitive information.
 
macOS Lynx said:
For me it's not been a few seconds of waiting - it's been 20-30s+. Safari will constantly hang (I'm guessing to establish a connection) to the point of unusability sometimes. Longest I waited was about 67 seconds. I'm hoping it's just a beta glitch, and not the performance I should actually expect.
Click to expand...

That really is extreme. Over a minute is a ridiculous time to wait. I’ve been fortunate not to have experienced anything that frustrates me so far, but I wonder if it’s supplier (Apple, or whoever the other company is - I’d put money on Amazon, but who knows) dependent, or the website.

For the website that took over a minute, of its one you’re able/willing to share, I’d be curious to give it a go.
 
TrueBlou said:
That really is extreme. Over a minute is a ridiculous time to wait. I’ve been fortunate not to have experienced anything that frustrates me so far, but I wonder if it’s supplier (Apple, or whoever the other company is - I’d put money on Amazon, but who knows) dependent, or the website.

For the website that took over a minute, of its one you’re able/willing to share, I’d be curious to give it a go.
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Sure - MacRumors.com was one of them 😅.

It also wasn’t just network issues with Safari - it was with everything.

I’m chalking it up to it being some kind of bug that doesn’t affect everyone. I’ll give it a test again when Beta 2 drops.
 
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Remember it’s still a beta, the earliest beta in-fact, so don’t take any problems you currently have as long term.
 
Is it not only using US nodes in the current beta? Might impact performance depending on your location.
 
Worth mentioning that if you finally get results after about 20 seconds or so, odds are it fell back to your normal connection. This can be verified by trying to find your IP on Google before and after this behaviour, or trying to replicate it with that Google search. It’ll flip between a mix of ipv4 address, ipv6 address, and your address from time to time when private relay isn’t being performant enough.
 
dannyyankou said:
When you’re putting everything through what is effectively a VPN, it’s going to slow down a little. The other option is to turn it off.
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I have used VPN through Hotspot Shield and I've never noticed speed difference. macrumors always loads instantly. Streaming is instant as well.

I'm guessing this is just a beta thing.
 
matrix07 said:
I have used VPN through Hotspot Shield and I've never noticed speed difference. macrumors always loads instantly. Streaming is instant as well.

I'm guessing this is just a beta thing.
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You’re always gonna lose bandwidth anytime you use a VPN and the farther the server location the less your speeds will be. Run a speed test with and without a VPN and you’ll see. Just cuz something loads instantly doesn’t mean there’s no bandwidth loss. It just means you have enough bandwidth to load a website or stream the content.
 
macOS Lynx said:
For me it's not been a few seconds of waiting - it's been 20-30s+. Safari will constantly hang (I'm guessing to establish a connection) to the point of unusability sometimes. Longest I waited was about 67 seconds. I'm hoping it's just a beta glitch, and not the performance I should actually expect.
Click to expand...
Slow down is the best case scenario for me cause after opening private relay, a handful of my frequently accessed website just won’t load anymore, no matter how long I Wait. Some are for my work, so I have to turn it off for now.
 
There’s definitely a bug of some sort happening occasionally, if only to select individuals. I’ve had it work well at times and basically freeze up entirely at other times (over a minute if I’m lucky). Turned it off for now. It’ll get better I’m sure.
 
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sniffies said:
The first two days, I didn't notice any difference in Safari speed with Private Relay enabled. But starting yesterday, it takes 3-5 seconds for content to start loading. As soon as I disable Private Relay, Safari speed goes back to normal.

The fact that I have to choose between speed or privacy is frustrating.

Same problem in Monterey.
Click to expand...
Works mostly fine considering first beta. If it hangs I close safari and reopen it. Usually works.
 
I bet Apple hasn't ramped this service to full capacity yet since we're in early beta mode.

They will probably add more servers and network capacity for private relay as we get closer to release.

That said, I only plan to use this feature sporadically, when using untrusted networks.
 
Shirasaki said:
Slow down is the best case scenario for me cause after opening private relay, a handful of my frequently accessed website just won’t load anymore, no matter how long I Wait. Some are for my work, so I have to turn it off for now.
Click to expand...
I wonder if they allow per-website settings for this, like with content blockers etc.
We could whitelist certain sites to load without Private Relay (e.g. work sites).
 
I don't know. It seems Apple frequently has icloud issues of some type regularly.

It is unclear why they can't keep their cloud services up consistently. I mean heck they use AWS. Google can keep zero outages for weeks.

I mean look at Apple Card, it is down again https://www.apple.com/support/systemstatus/. I have never heard of a regular credit card being "down" from being usable.

The only issue with this is making that additional hop, and if Apple is down you have zero internet without turning it off.
 
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