- Occasionally,
the response of the system seems very slow.
Reason:
Like
any other Internet applications, the response time of the
DCP system is affected by the following 3 factors:
- User's
internal network traffic conditions - Some users access
the Internet via their internal network (rather than using
direct Internet connection from their local PC such as
broadband). Under such circumstances, the speed of the
Internet connection would very much depend on the number
of users sharing and using the same Internet connection
at any one time (i.e. the larger the number of users,
the slower the speed).
- Public
or Internet Service Provider's (ISP) Internet traffic
conditions - After the data have been sent out from
the user's internal environment, they will first flow
through the ISP's network and the public Internet, which
may also affect the speed of the transmission, before
reaching Tradelink's system. The degree of the effect
depends on the quality of the ISP's network / service
and also the overall traffic at that time (i.e. generally
slower during "peak" hours).
- Tradelink's
system loading - When the data reaches Tradelink,
it will be processed by Tradelink's internal system which
is currently running on multiple servers. Like any other
systems developed by Tradelink, the design of the Tradelink
DCP system is based on user requirements for high availability,
performance and reliability. The system is constantly
being under close monitoring by a team of experienced
and well trained operation staff.
Suggestion:
On user's
side, if slow response is being experienced, it is suggested
that, user to try to access other secure Internet services,
such as Internet Banking services and compare the response
time from those sites. If the response time is similar,
it is most likely caused by the first two factors mentioned
above. In that case, you may want to contact your internal
network administrator or ISP to see how they can help improve
the speed of your Internet connection. Or if you suspect
that the system loading is high, you may try to reconnect
to the system a while later. Besides, you are as always
most welcome to contact our hotline at 2917 8881 for enquiry.
- After
a permit application is prepared, the browser seems to have
no response and hang up after I pressed the "Preview
and Send" button.
Reason:
After
a user presses the "Preview and Send" button,
some validations would be performed in your local PC which
may take a while depending on the processing capacity of
your PC and the number of line items of your permit application.
For example, the system will check if the DC code is valid
or not to avoid later rejection of permit application by
the backend systems of Tradelink or Government. As a rule
of thumb, the larger the number of line items, the longer
the validation time would be required. Here are some measurements
for your reference:
For
First Duty-Paid permit with 99 items:
PC configuration:
Intel Pentium 200 MHz MMX with 96M Ram
Validation time: ~7 minutes.
PC configuration:
Intel PIII 550 MHz with 64M Ram
Validation time: ~4 minutes.
PC configuration:
Intel P4 1.5GHz with 256M Ram
Validation time: ~1 minutes.
Please
note that the above figures should be used as reference
information only and there are other factors (e.g. any other
applications such as MS Word, Excel being running concurrently
on the same PC) which also affect the processing time.
Suggestion:
When
preparing the permit application, you may try closing other
applications. For users who need to prepare permit applications
involving large number of line items all the time, more
powerful PC configuration is recommended. The current recommended
configuration for high volume user is:
- Recommended
set-up requirement:
Pentium
III PC with 733 MHz CPU
256
MB RAM
10
GB free hard disk space
Super
VGA Monitor
Mouse
or Windows compatible pointing device
Window
2000
I.E.
5.0 or above which support Big 5 characters set, i.e.
for Chinese application, it should support Big 5 and Chinese
Character set which is commonly used in Hong Kong but
not found in Big 5.
Access
to Internet with lease line and broadband connection
Connect
to Laser Printer
