Interactive
Watch a request travel
Seven steps happen between a click and a readable page. Change where the server is and watch which steps move, and which stubbornly do not.
Turn the name into an address. Cached after the first time.32ms
Agree to talk at all. One round trip.40ms
Agree to talk privately. The S in HTTPS.48ms
Your method, path and headers cross the distance.20ms
Loaders run, the database is queried. Independent of distance.35ms
The HTML comes back the same way.20ms
Parse, style, paint. Independent of distance.60ms
255ms before the page is readable. 63% of that is the network, not your code.
Only two of these seven steps are affected by how well the application is written. Distance and connection setup dominate everything else, which is why “move it closer” and “stop making so many round trips” beat micro-optimisation almost every time.
What this page is demonstrating
Both modes are the same route with the same validated search params. “Read it” is server-rendered, so its content is in the HTML. “Run it” opts out of server rendering entirely, because a running clock cannot be rendered ahead of time. The server sends a placeholder and the browser takes over. View source on each and compare.