Slow Sorts via WebDirect

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Sorts are taking too long for me on FileMaker Cloud.
A database solution on a local machine (no network) sorts 400 records in less than one second; 
the same sort via FileMaker Cloud (no Webdirect, no browser, just FileMaker Pro Advanced) takes 30-40 seconds.

None of the usual suspects (such as unstored calculations) is involved. It just takes way longer. Richard Carlson 
says that FM Cloud (like WebDirect) forces all sorts to take place on the server. Does this mean that our AWS server 
is simply slow, and we have to live with that?