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HTTP Intermediary Layer From Google Could Dramatically Speed Up the Web

grmoc writes "As part of the 'Let's make the web faster' initiative, we (a few engineers — including me! — at Google, and hopefully people all across the community soon!) are experimenting with alternative protocols to help reduce the latency of Web pages. One of these experiments is SPDY (pronounced 'SPeeDY'), an application-layer protocol (essentially a shim between HTTP and the bits on the wire) for transporting content over the web, designed specifically for minimal latency. In addition to a rough specification for the protocol, we have hacked SPDY into the Google Chrome browser (because it's what we're familiar with) and a simple server testbed. Using these hacked up bits, we compared the performance of many of the top 25 and top 300 websites over both HTTP and SPDY, and have observed those pages load, on average, about twice as fast using SPDY. Thats not bad! We hope to engage the open source community to contribute ideas, feedback, code (we've open sourced the protocol, etc!), and test results."

25 of 406 comments (clear)

  1. Oh that's wonderful by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Now we can see Uncle Goatse twice as fast.

    1. Re:Oh that's wonderful by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      http://www.goatse.cx/

      Surely you mean spdy://www.goatse.cx/

    2. Re:Oh that's wonderful by operagost · · Score: 3, Funny

      Wow... how long has it been since someone was modded UP for goatse?

      --

      Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
    3. Re:Oh that's wonderful by Simon+(S2) · · Score: 5, Funny

      I want my old Internet back.

      ME TOO!

      --
      I just don't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die.
    4. Re:Oh that's wonderful by nschubach · · Score: 4, Funny

      Just over 2 hours.

      --
      Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
  2. Before you click! by courteaudotbiz · · Score: 3, Funny

    In the future, the content will be loaded before you click! Unfortunately, it's not like it today, so I didn't make the first post...

    1. Re:Before you click! by commodore64_love · · Score: 4, Funny

      >>>Sounds like those "dialup accelerators" from back in the '90s ...

      Hey I still use one of those you insensitive clod! It's called Netscape Web Accelerator, and it does more than just prefetch requests - it also compresses all text and images to about 10% original size. How else would I watch 90210 streaming videos over my phoneline?

      Why I can almost see what looks like a bikini. Man Kelly is hot... ;-)

      --
      "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
    2. Re:Before you click! by commodore64_love · · Score: 2, Funny

      But seriously...

      the accelerator (compression) is really useful, and I couldn't imagine using dialup without it. It makes those slow 28k or 50k hotel connections look as fast as my home DSL hookup. (Except for the blurry images of course.)

      --
      "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
    3. Re:Before you click! by grmoc · · Score: 2, Funny

      Its not the same, really...
      SPDY could do prefetching (in which case it'd be server push, instead of a new pull), but mainly what it does is it lets a lot of requests use the same connection, and does compression on the HTTP headers.
      Thats essentially almost all of the current performance advantage (for today).

  3. Slashdot could use the help by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    How is this different from Web servers that serve up gzipped pages?

    If only the Google engineers can do something about Slashdot's atrociously slow Javascript. Like maybe they can remove the sleep() statements.

    What, just because the original poster pulls a "look at me, I did something cool, therefore I must be cool!" doesn't mean I have to go along with it.

    1. Re:Slashdot could use the help by Minwee · · Score: 2, Funny

      Like maybe they can remove the sleep() statements.

      The technical term for that is a Speedup Loop. All good software developers use them... for certain values of 'good'.

  4. Just turn off image loading by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    You can generally surf the web ten times or faster if you just
    1) Turn off image loading
    2) Turn off Javascript
    3) Turn off Java
    4) Turn off plugins

    yeah, yeah... I know... It's called "lynx"

    1. Re:Just turn off image loading by spun · · Score: 2, Funny

      You youngsters and your fancy text based web browsers. In my day, we used gopher, and we LIKED it!

      --
      - None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
    2. Re:Just turn off image loading by C0vardeAn0nim0 · · Score: 5, Funny

      here's an onion to hang on your belt, granpa.

      now, on a more serious note, isn't gopher a faster protocol than HTTP ? could we just use it to transport html, pictures, etc ?

      --
      What ? Me, worry ?
    3. Re:Just turn off image loading by spun · · Score: 2, Funny

      Port 80? That newfangled HTTP thing? Gopher predates HTTP by a fair number of years. You can try that fancy pants modern trick now but back in the day, that would have got you nothing.

      Of course, Gopher is newer than Telnet. And Telnet is newer than BBSs. And BBSs are newer than dialing in to the university mainframe over a 300 baud acoustic-coupled modem connected to a teletype, which is where I cut my teeth, sonny boy.

      --
      - None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
  5. Re:How about telling Analytics to take a hike? by ramaboo · · Score: 5, Funny

    And all other "add this piece of Javascript to your Web page and make it more awesomer!"

    Yes, yes, they're useful. And you can't fathom a future without them. But in the meantime I'm watching my status bar say, "completed 4 of 5 items", then change to "completed 11 of 27 items", to "completed 18 of 57 items", to "completed... oh screw this, you're downloading the whole Internet, just sit back, relax and watch the blinkenlights".

    Remember when a 768kbps DSL line was whizzo fast? Because all it had to download was some simple HTML, maybe some gifs?

    I want my old Internet back. And a pony.

    That's why smart web developers put those scripts at the end of the body.

  6. Re:Solving the wrong problem by BlueBoxSW.com · · Score: 2, Funny

    So if Google sped up the non-ad web, they would have more room for their ads?

    SNEAKY!!

  7. Re:Solving the wrong problem by Monkeedude1212 · · Score: 4, Funny

    I think you mean SNKY

  8. Re:and faster still.. by amicusNYCL · · Score: 3, Funny

    You could also remove images, CSS, Javascript, and text, imagine the time savings!

    --
    "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
  9. Re:Is he your biological uncle? by Sparky+McGruff · · Score: 3, Funny

    oldermanwholikestofondleyou.cx

    To follow the goatse.cx standard, I believe it should be http://oldermanwholikestofondleyour.co.ck

    It's only $250 to register a .co.ck address!

  10. Re:and faster still.. by Joe+Mucchiello · · Score: 4, Funny

    Remove the content too. It's all meaningless stuff like this post.

  11. "we've open sourced the code" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    we need some stupid idealistic programmer to do the work we dont want [to do, to spend on, etc]

  12. Re:and faster still.. by icebraining · · Score: 2, Funny

    So save the CSS to your HD and put a filter in an extension/proxy/etc to replace the CSS URL with your local file. Wait, isn't that what the cache is for? Hmm...

  13. fst wb prtcl by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    If they really wanted a faster web, they would have minimized the protocol name. Taking out vowels isn't enough.

    The protocol should be renamed to just 's'.

    That's 3 less bytes per request.

    I can haz goolge internship?

  14. Re:and faster still.. by ConceptJunkie · · Score: 2, Funny

    I heard of a program called DeCSS. Maybe that's what it does!

    --
    You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.