Optimizing Page Load Times

John Callender writes, "Google engineer Aaron Hopkins has written an interesting analysis of optimizing page load time. Hopkins simulated connections to a web page consisting of many small objects (HTML file, images, external javascript and CSS files, etc.), and looked at how things like browser settings and request size affect perceived performance. Among his findings: For web pages consisting of many small objects, performance often bottlenecks on upload speed, rather than download speed. Also, by spreading static content across four different hostnames, site operators can achieve dramatic improvements in perceived performance."

Comments

Re:HTTP Pipelining

[baadger]

This is NOT just Opera fanboyism, but Opera however *does* do pipelining by default (with a safe fallback)

Opera pipelines by default - and uses heuristics to control the level of pipelining employed depending on the server Opera is connected to

Reference

Re:Simulation software available?

[ggvaidya]

You could try using Sloppy. I've only ever heard about it because its programmer has a very nice page on getting a free Thwarte FreeMail certificate to work with Java WebStart, so this isn't a recommendation or anything. Looks pretty decent, though.

Re:HTTP/1.1 Design

[x2A]

The limit's not to do with your connection speed as such - it's to do with being polite and not putting too much drain on the server your downloading from.