Response time from HTTPS and HTTP web services

Question

I have an application in WPF which is using Java web service. Users can search some documents via application. Two days ago they(who have created the web service) told me that I must change url of the service. So, I did it. But after that the application began to get datas slower than previous. To tell the truth, i am making about 12 request to the web service in one searching. But it was getting all datas in approximately 0.52 second with the previuos web service which was using HTTPS. But the current web service is using HTTP and it takes about 8 seconds to get all datas. And in my opinion the problem might be protocol. But actually, processing time in HTTP must be greater than HTTPS. So, what could be a problem? Also, i am connecting to web service with that code:

HQRTXServiceWSService service = new HQRTXServiceWSService();
service.Url = " a url of the web service";
service.Credentials = new System.Net.NetworkCredential("user", "password");
service.PreAuthenticate = true;

Answer 1

Maybe the webservice implementation has been updated and they messed up with their performance?

It could also be their infrastructure, or if there are more people using their webservice... Could be many things but your code ;)

I don't think that HTTP should be slower than HTTPS, usually, it's the contrary, because there's a small overhead for encryption on HTTPS.