Ok then you're not looking for the TTFB but for the server response time (in green on updown.io status page) this one does not include connection and handshake, though it still includes the network latency in addition to the server time as we can't get the exact server time from a remote location. But if you look at the number from a close location (small connect time) or if you subtract the connection time, you can get a pretty good idea of the server only response time.

I found another service that does what Im looking for - http://www.bytecheck.com.

I find that information valuable in terms of looking at the health of the application, and would be a nice addition to the information you have on https://meta.updown.io/

What I wanted to measure, and have an indication of, was the time that the application on the server was using to process the request.

Not so much about the infrastructure and network, but the actual time the application used to generate the response from when the request was sent to the time when the application began to send the response.

Response time does include the download but it doesn't include the connection and handshake time, whereas the TTFB from chrome does include these but not the download time. As this is server to server the download time is most of the time negligible, unless you're bandwidth constrained, so the number you're interested in would be the total time.

This one is not included in the dashboard because it's very location dependent of course and showing and average may not be very clear, whereas on the status page as there's the detail per location it is clearer.

Do you think we should put something like the total time average in the dashboard? when you say dashboard are you talking about the status page or the list of checks in your account?

Response time includes the download of the actual content I guess?

I'm thinking of the same info as we get in Chrome Inspector. The TTFB

What do you mean exactly by "the timing to the first response" ? Which number would it be from the detailed timings chart? (ex https://meta.updown.io/)