Tag Archives: Optimization

The Surprising Effect of Distance on Download Speed

August 08th, 2008 - 1:39PM

Let’s start with a question. What download speed would you expect in this scenario? If you just think of network connections as a simple pipe, then you might expect the download speed to be approximately the same as the slowest network connection, i.e. 20 Mbps. When we tested this out using a local UK based website with a ping time of 13 ms we saw this: The download speed of 1.57 MB /s or 12.56 Mbps (i.e. 1.57 x 8 for 8 bits per byte) was over 60% of the theoretical maximum for the internet connection. That’s quite respectable if … Continue reading →

Google uses HttpWatch to Speed Up Gmail

May 05th, 2008 - 11:52AM

There’s a post over on the Gmail blog by Wiltse Carpenter, the Tech Lead for Gmail Performance, about how they used HttpWatch and other tools to speed up the login for Gmail. Here’s what they said about HttpWatch: “The Httpwatch plug-in for Internet Explorer was one that proved easy to use and provided us with most of the information we needed. It really helps that we can capture and save browser traces with it too.” To reduce the time required to login they looked for ways to minimize the number of requests and reduce the overhead of each request: “We spent … Continue reading →

The Performance Benefits of Ajax

April 04th, 2008 - 11:56AM

Web 2.0 is a term often used to describe next generation web sites that have moved beyond the simple page request->process->response cycle and are utilizing services on the web server to return data that can be rendered without making page transitions. The result is often a more responsive user interface that closely mimics a desktop application. The technology to make HTTP calls from JavaScript embedded in an HTML page was first introduced for general use by Microsoft in IE5 in order to support Outlook Web Access way back in 1999. However, the XmlHttpRequest object was not widely used until it was adopted by … Continue reading →