Extreme use of RAM on Mac OS Safari

[Haertie]

When I use the dashboard with Firefox, Edge, or Safari, the memory usage is extremely high. After 10 minutes of use, I have 3-4 gigabytes of RAM. The same behavior occurs on a Windows PC. It only works normally when using Google Chrome. Is the dashboard optimized exclusively for Chrome?

[rhbirkelund]

Yeah, I've also been noticing the same. For the last few weeks, I've seen my dashboard pages having reloaded due to excessive memory usage. Rather annoying when having to have multiple tabs open during troubleshooting.

I see the same on the latest version of Safari on MacOS 18.5.

[Haertie]

It affects not only Safari on Mac, but also other browsers and Windows. Only Google Chrome seems to be unaffected, which is strange.

[alemabrahao]

It has worked well for me, without any problems.

[RWelch]

Glad @Haertie to see your post as I thought it was the shard that my dashboard sits (exist).  And glad to see @rhbirkelund finding the same.

Glad it's not just me that it's happening to.

[BlakeRichardson]

@Haertie does the amount of memory fluctuate based on what part of the dashboard you are viewing, I would think that viewing MV content would use more resources that simply viewing the network clients page. 

[PhilipDAth]

As a matter of interest, what happens if you disable some of the cookies, like the performance cookies (scroll to the very bottom of the page to find this)?

Personally, I have disabled performance and targeting cookies.  I posted about this a while ago, but on my machine using Chrome developer tools, I measured the performance, and it was FASTER with these cookies turned off.  I never bothered checking memory usage.

[Haertie]

@PhilipDAth 

Unfortunately, these cookies have no effect on memory usage. I think the developers are using some technology that is only properly supported by Google Chrome. I even have the memory problem with Edge (Windows and Mac OS), even though this browser is based on Chrome. We have a fairly large environment with many devices, and I've only been experiencing this behavior since Meraki started working on the new dashboard. I didn't have these problems before. Anyone whose dashboard feels slow should keep an eye on their memory usage. I don't understand why the developers don't notice this. Maybe they only use Chrome.

[PhilipDAth]

Have you tried updating your browser?  Perhaps it is a browser bug.

[Haertie]

It would be nice if it were that simple. I've tried all of that, and the problem isn't limited to one browser. I suspect it's related to a specific function in the dashboard, which would explain why it doesn't affect everyone.

[PhilipDAth]

This sounds more like a Safari issue than a Meraki issue.  It appears that the browser is experiencing a memory leak or struggling with memory management.

[JGreen1280]

I am a Windows user and have the exact same issue. Chrome, Firefox, edge they all do the same. I was actually just complaining about it to my Meraki TSA last week.

I also experienced the issue on my Android phone. I have not confirmed that it's RAM utilization but the phone pretty much locks up till I close the dashboard. 

Here's how I reproduce, first of all the dashboard is sluggish, extremely slow and painful. When I select a site with access points, and I want to view the list of access points it can sometimes take minutes to load the list of access points even if there's only three. 

When I click on an access point, the page takes 10 to 12 seconds just to load and as soon as it loads it refreshes and you have to wait again. 

With the access point page open, it's something going on with the live graphs and objects that connect to the device or show you live connections and utilization. This somehow is what I think is causing the issue. 

This occurs on the old version, and the new version of the page, but is more stable in the old version. 

Generally when working on issues at a location, I may have to open up that live view page for three different access points at the same time, sometimes four or five. Once you get one or two of them open, my RAM utilization will go from 9 gigs utilized all the way up to 15. It will completely max out. 

Thinking that it was a problem with my machine, I tried it from another machine, fresh build of windows on a virtual machine and it has the same issue. When I open the page on my Android phone the browser pretty much froze and locked up, so I'm not sure why some are seeing this and others aren't, but I'm definitely seeing it across all devices I use to access dash. 

My personal Meraki account is on shard n17, and my large corporate account is on shard n45. The issue is consistent on both of them. But it seems to be worse on n45. 

[Haertie]

I would like to revisit this topic. After many weeks of testing and trial and error, I am quite certain that the developers at Cisco-Meraki are developing the dashboard exclusively for Chrome-based browsers.

I have tried pretty much every browser available for weeks on Mac OS, Linux, and Windows, and my conclusion is that I have the memory problem everywhere except with Chrome-based browsers. Last week, I attended a Cisco Meraki training course and was able to use a dashboard there. The result was the same.

With Chrome, Edge, Brave, Chromium, etc., the dashboard runs relatively well and the memory consumption is quite acceptable. Usually no more than 1.5 gigabytes of RAM. All other browsers go crazy. Safari, Vivaldi, Firefox, and various smaller browsers all have this problem. Incidentally, the operating system plays no role in this.

Dear developers at Cisco Meraki. If you happen to be reading this. If that's the case, then just write it down. “Chrome-based dashboard only.” Then at least customers know what's going on and don't have to spend a lot of time troubleshooting.

In my opinion, it's just bad if you can't manage to program something like this for every browser. The main thing is blue bars and colorful bells and whistles.