November 12th, 2009
Can Google make the Web SPDYer? Maybe, with your help
A team of software engineers at Google who are working on a project known as SPDY - and pronounced Speedy - are reaching out for some input from engineering types. The early-stage research project, which has only been tested in labs so far, is working to speed up the Web.
This project is way deeper into the weeds of technology than I am, so I leave it to the engineering types to explain it. From the blog post:
SPDY is at its core an application-layer protocol for transporting content over the web. It is designed specifically for minimizing latency through features such as multiplexed streams, request prioritization and HTTP header compression. We started working on SPDY while exploring ways to optimize the way browsers and servers communicate. Today, web clients and servers speak HTTP. HTTP is an elegantly simple protocol that emerged as a web standard in 1996 after a series of experiments. HTTP has served the web incredibly well. We want to continue building on the web’s tradition of experimentation and optimization, to further support the evolution of websites and browsers.
The team says the initial results are encouraging as they’ve seen a “significant improvement in performance,” with web pages loading 55 percent faster over a simulated home network connection. Still, the team acknowledges that it still has a lot of work to do to evaluate SPDY in real-world conditions.
The company says it’s at a point where it can benefit from feedback and assistance from the Web community. Those interested are encouraged to review the early stage documentation, look at the current code and offer your two cents through the Chromium Google Group.
Sam Diaz is a senior editor at ZDNet. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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