Viv,

I don't think this is somehting inherent in the Web Serivce, but possibly some sort of contention issue. What else is running on the Web Server? Anything keeping the thing really busy? Accessing SQL Server maybe while it's running maint tasks or something like this?

Another thing is that it could be that the app might be rstarting. Check your event logs and see if when the slowness occurs it might be because the app is restarting. If you're running IIS 6 on the server the app can shut down automatically when it's idle (in 20 seconds by default) - this is configurable via the Application Pool you configure.

+++ Rick ---

>Hi,
>
>I have a VB.NET web service that intermittently takes 60-80 seconds to respond when the normal reponse time is sub 1 sec.
>
>Attempting to identify the source of the delay I synchronised the clocks on the server and client and added a simple web method to return DateTime.Now.ToString().
>
>When testing the web service on the production server from VFP the SoapInit() is accomplished instantly (well < 1sec) but the returned value shows that 60-80 seconds then elapse before the method executes. The result is then back <1sec.
>
>The same .NET assembly running on my development web server (LAN) never has this delay. I'm thinking that the difference may be in the IIS configurations but have no idea where it might be.
>
>Any suggestions as to what to look at/for ?
>Regards,
>Viv