If I understood correctly, the rule is dependent on web server features and/or configuration. In that case, an overview of web servers which have or have not implemented the slow start algorithm would be interesting.
A 14kb page can load much faster than a 15kb page (2022)
81–90 of 324 posts
Re: A 14kb page can load much faster than a 15kb page (2022)
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
The vast majority of internet bandwidth is people streaming video. Shaving a few megs from a webpage load would be the tiniest drop in the bucket. I am all for efficiency, but optimizing everywhere is a recipe for using up the resources to actually optimize where it matters.
In that spirit I have a userscript, ironically called Youtube HD[0], that with one edit sets the resolution to 'medium' ie 360p. On a laptop it's plenty for talking head content (the softening is nice actually), and I only find myself switching to 480p if there's small text on screen. It's a small thing, but as you say internet video is relatively heavy. To reduce my AI footprint I use the udm=14 trick[1] to kill AI…
[deleted]
Re: A 14kb page can load much faster than a 15kb page (2022)
#83Aside from latency, reducing ressources consumption to the minimum required should always be a concern if we intend to have a sustainable future. The environmental impact of our network is not negligible. Given the snarky comments here, we clearly have a long way to go. EDIT: some reply missed my point, I am not claiming this particular optimization is the holy grail, only that I'd have liked for added benefit of red…
Yeah, the environmental impact of jackasses mining jackass coin, or jackasses training LLMs is not insignificant. Are you seriously telling me now that if my website is 256k or 1024k I'm responsible for destroying the planet? Take it out on your masters. And no, reducing resource use to the minimum in the name of sustainability does not scale down the same way it scales up. You're just pushing the idea that all human…
> the environmental impact of jackasses mining jackass coin, or jackasses training LLMs is not insignificant
Whataboutism. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
> You're just pushing the idea that all human activity is some sort of disease that's best disposed of. That's essentially just wishing the worst on your own species for being successful.
Strawmaning. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
Every bloody mention of the environmental impact of our activities gets at least a reply like yours that ticks one of these boxes.
Re: A 14kb page can load much faster than a 15kb page (2022)
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
It really depends on who your clients are and where they are. https://www.mcmaster.com/ was found last year to be doing some real magic to make it load literally as fast as possible for the crapiest computers possible.
Do you have any idea what they actually did? It would be interesting to study. That site really is blazing fast.
Quick look: GSLB (via Akamai) for low latency, tricks like using CSS sprite to serve a single image in place of 20 or so for fewer round-trips, heavy use of caching, possibly some service worker magic but I didn't dig that far. :)
Basically, looks like someone deliberately did many right things without being lazy or cheap to create a performant web site.
Re: A 14kb page can load much faster than a 15kb page (2022)
#85How relevant is this now, if you have a modern server that supports HTTP/3?
HTTP/3 uses UDP rather than TCP, so TCP slow start should not apply at all.
Re: A 14kb page can load much faster than a 15kb page (2022)
#86Re: A 14kb page can load much faster than a 15kb page (2022)
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
From TFA: > Also HTTPS requires two additional round trips before it can do the first one — which gets us up to 1836ms!
This hasn’t been the case since TLS1.3 (over 5 years ago) which reduced it to 1-RTT - or 0-RTT when keys are known (cached or preshared). Same with QUIC.
Good to know, however "when the keys are know" refers to a second visit (or request) of the site right ? That isn’t helpful for the first data paquets - at least that what I understand from the site.
Re: A 14kb page can load much faster than a 15kb page (2022)
#88And you do know that .exe file is wasteful, .com file actually saves quite a few bytes if you can limit your executable's size to be smaller than 0xFF00h (man, I am old).
And a.out format often saves disk space over elf, despite duplicating code across executables.
Re: A 14kb page can load much faster than a 15kb page (2022)
#89How relevant is this now, if you have a modern server that supports HTTP/3? HTTP/3 uses UDP rather than TCP, so TCP slow start should not apply at all.
> How relevant is this now
Very relevant. A lot of websites need 5 to 30 seconds or more to load.
Re: A 14kb page can load much faster than a 15kb page (2022)
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
The vast majority of internet bandwidth is people streaming video. Shaving a few megs from a webpage load would be the tiniest drop in the bucket. I am all for efficiency, but optimizing everywhere is a recipe for using up the resources to actually optimize where it matters.
In that spirit I have a userscript, ironically called Youtube HD[0], that with one edit sets the resolution to 'medium' ie 360p. On a laptop it's plenty for talking head content (the softening is nice actually), and I only find myself switching to 480p if there's small text on screen. It's a small thing, but as you say internet video is relatively heavy. To reduce my AI footprint I use the udm=14 trick[1] to kill AI…
I've been using uBlock in advanced mode with 3rd party frames and scripts blocked. I recommend it, but it is indeed a pain to find the minimum set of things you need to unblock to make a website work, involving lots of refreshing.
Once you find it for a website you can just save it though so you don't need to go through it again.
LocalCDN is indeed a nobrainer for privacy! Set and forget.