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Google's SPDY Could Be Incorporated Into Next-Gen HTTP
MojoKid writes "Google's efforts to improve Internet efficiency through the development of the SPDY (pronounced 'speedy') protocol got a major boost today when the chairman of the HTTP Working Group (HTTPbis), Mark Nottingham, called for it to be included in the HTTP 2.0 standard. SPDY is a protocol that's already used to a certain degree online; formal incorporation into the next-generation standard would improve its chances of being generally adopted. SPDY's goal is to reduce web page load times through the use of header compression, packet prioritization, and multiplexing (combining multiple requests into a single connection). By default, a web browser opens an individual connection for each and every page request, which can lead to tremendous inefficiencies."
I realise that SPDY is about reducing the latency of HTTP connection handshakes -
but wouldn't using the already existing and even implemented HTTP 1.1 standards
for pipelining (requesting multiple resources in one request) and keep-alive (keeping
a once-established connection open for reuse) mostly remove the handshake latency
bottleneck?
By default, a web browser opens an individual connection for each and every page request, which can lead to tremendous inefficiencies
HTTP1.1 which is supported by everything newer than IE5 (at least) utilizes persistent connections. You can verify this yourself with Wireshark in seconds. SPDYs optimizations largely revolve around "pipelining", but without some of the issues that it causes.
Several mobile phone companies and some browsers offer special proxies nowadays to speed up browser experience on mobile phone and to reduce data usage for customers by serving prerendered or otherwise optimized/reduced pages. This might severely reduce Googles ability to collect user data from these users on the visited web pages (unless the user is logged in to google+ or alike with his browser, which might be unlikely given that for social networks there are usually separate apps).
Is this now a step to reduce the need for these proxies in order to protect their own business?
Trolling is a art!
Too true. Installing the Firefox NoScript extension has been an eye-opener for me.
SPDY's goal is to reduce web page load times through the use of header compression, packet prioritization, and multiplexing (combining multiple requests into a single connection).
I'd like to see SCTP getting some love, which sadly enough seems unlikely if it hasn't happened so far. It's a very simple protocol mixing the good parts of both TCP and UDP, plus it supports multiplexing and priorization off the bat.
SPDY is a great example of someone thinking only of their own application.
By increasing the initial window size from 3 to 10 they add to the bufferbloat effect (at the microscopic level) and increase Jitter from tolerable 38 ms to intolerable 126 ms on a 1 Mbit/s ADSL line. This level of jitter severely affects VoIP sound quality. And for this calculation I have assumed that the web browser only uses one TCP connection to load the page; if it uses two TCP connections the Jitter may double.
But hey! What does any application developer care about other applications? They are only concerned about getting their own application sped up.
When you improve the performance of your application, you should think about how it degrades the performance of other applications. If someone recommended increasing the O/S priority level of the web browser to the maximum, so all your other applications slowed down to a halt while the web browser was running, you would probably object. The increased initial window size is a comparable recommendation, but at a network buffering level, so very few people understand its negative side effects.
We all want faster loading web pages, but we also want other applications to respond faster, and we also want perfect VoIP sound quality without the walkie talkie effect caused by high latency or jitter.
I have that option too, but I'm willing to allow Slashdot to make whatever meager income they can by my presence since they're kind enough to allow my positive (and negative) contributions.