Very Slow WebResponse triggering TimeOut

Question

I have a function in C# that fetches the status of Internet by retrieving a 64b XML from the router page

public bool isOn()
        {
            HttpWebRequest hwebRequest = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create("http://" + this.routerIp + "/top_conn.xml");
            hwebRequest.Timeout = 500;
            HttpWebResponse hWebResponse = (HttpWebResponse)hwebRequest.GetResponse();
            XmlTextReader oXmlReader = new XmlTextReader(hWebResponse.GetResponseStream());       
            string value;
            while (oXmlReader.Read())
            {
                value = oXmlReader.Value;
                if (value.Trim() != ""){
                    return !value.Substring(value.IndexOf("=") + 1, 1).Equals("0");
                }
            }
            return false;

        }

using Mozilla Firefox 3.5 & FireBug addon i guessed it normally takes 30ms to retrieve the page however at the very huge 500ms limit it stills reach it often. How can I dramatically improve the performance?

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

You're not closing the web response. If you've issued requests to the same server and not closed those responses, that's the problem.

Stick the response in a using statement:

public bool IsOn()
{
    HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest) WebRequest.Create
        ("http://" + this.routerIp + "/top_conn.xml");
    request.Timeout = 500;
    using (HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse) request.GetResponse())
    using (XmlReader reader = XmlReader.Create(response.GetResponseStream()))
    {      
        while (reader.Read())
        {
            string value = reader.Value;
            if (value.Trim() != "")
            {
                return value.Substring(value.IndexOf("=") + 1, 1) != "0";
            }
        }
    }
    return false;    
}

(I've made a few other alterations at the same time...)