Your enthusiasm for Chrome is well noted Steve, but I do not foresee a 15% difference will be measured by most people in meaningful ways.
You and I have talked offline about HTTP Pipelining. SPDY is "Google only". HTTP Pipelining has been in the HTTP/1.1 since 10+ years ago and isn't dependent on everyone changing their web server.
Users getting much faster Internet connections, Google kickstarting JavaScript with crazy fast speeds and finally GPU assisted rendering of web pages have collectively made browsing the Net far more measureable that a 15% improvement in the retrieval of a single web page. The existence of Content Distribution Networks such as Akamai and CloudFront have a far, far bigger impact in what the user perceives (for the better). That would be static content such as images, CSS, JavaScript, etc., etc.
All this while keeping HTTP sacrosanct. Suggesting we move to another layer 7 protocol doesn't resonate with me. I could argue (and many would agree) we should have done that with email ages ago (get rid of SMTP) to severely kick spam between the legs. Yet the largest mail providers haven't grabbed the bull by the horns and pushed for a new layer 7 means of sending mail. I might add that Microsoft didn't do the web any favors when it had 90% of the market and "IE Only" littered the web. Honestly, I don't care to see "Works best with Chrome" web sites.
Yes, I use Chrome, just not exclusively. I acknowledge and give Google many kudos for starting a "speed race" among the browser developers and thus making the web more accessible with less computational power (great for people with older wares).
However as I see it, you're making a suggestion of "Same script, different actors" (Google instead of Microsoft).
No thanks,
-M
Do you want a really fast Web site? I mean really fast? Then there’s a variety of proxies, Web caching and secure-socket layer (SSL) accelerators you can try. If that’s still not enough, it’s time for you to look into Strangeloop’s implementation of Google’s SPDY into its Site Optimizer product line.
SPDY, pronounced “speedy,”is an experimental replacement protocol for HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol). SPDY works by compressing both the data and HTTP header information n the stream between a Web browsers and Web servers that support it. It also speeds Web sites up by prioritizing data requests. That way the important data, say a video stream, gets priority over JavaScript. In practice, I’ve seen performance boosts of up to 15%.
To do this you need a browser that supports SPDY, like Chrome or a computer that comes with SPDY built in, such as the Samsung Chromebook.
That’s the easy part. The hard part was getting SPDY supported on the Web server side. There’s been some experimental code you could use, but nothing you could really put with confidence on a production site. That’s where Strangeloop comes in.
Strangeloop has been working closely with the Chromium Project team at Google to incorporate SPDY into their Web acceleration product and services lines. In a statement, Mike Belshe, Lead Software Engineer at Google said, “Our goal is to make the web faster for everyone. Strangeloop engineers embraced SPDY from the beginning and provided key data and feedback about their experience. They then integrated SPDY with their Site Optimizer product and moved rapidly from concept to code to product, demonstrating an impressive speed-up in their customers’ site performance.” The result, according to Strangeloop, is at least a 50% reduction in page load time.
I don’t know about that, but I do know that even the 15% I was seeing would be significant for any Web server company I’ve ever worked with.
The Strangeloop package does more than just add the SPDY protocol to your site. According to the company, it includes an “easy-to-implement solution to the complex challenges of WCO.” This “takes HTML that has been optimized for readability, supportability and maintainability and, while retaining these benefits, transforms it to HTML that is optimized for fast page rendering. This involves implementing numerous best practices such as rewriting object names, re-ordering when and how objects are rendered, re-ordering when scripts are executed, and optimizing content based on the requesting browser.” In other words, it sets up your Web page so that you can get the benefits of SPDY’s data request prioritization.
Strangeloop also states that this isn’t just something they’ve been working on in the labs. “Companies like Petco, Travelocity, Visa, Sodexo, and O’Reilly Media have implemented the Strangeloop Site Optimizer to speed up their websites.”
As you might guess from that customer list, Site Optimizer also includes SSL Acceleration features. This feature “offloads cryptographic tasks from the server and, if needed, also provides SSL re-encryption for back-end security.”
All-in-all, I think it sounds pretty impressive. Chrome is rapidly becoming the number two Web browser, and-who knows-it may even pass Internet Explorer in 2012. In any case, as it grows, SPDY will become an ever-more popular protocol and we can look forward to it being adopted by other browser vendors. With Strangeloop’s Site Optimizer in the data center and SPDY support in clients, you can expect to see real performance improvements for your users.
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