System loads web pages 34 percent faster by fetching files more effectively
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Re: System loads web pages 34 percent faster by fetching files more effectively
#2Relevant paper: "Polaris: Faster Page Loads Using Fine-grained Dependency Tracking", http://web.mit.edu/ravinet/www/polaris_nsdi16.pdf
Re: System loads web pages 34 percent faster by fetching files more effectively
#3Interesting. The paper was released before HTTP/2 was in widespread use. They do show that their approach has significant improvements over SPDY alone...I wonder how the comparison to HTTP/2 alone would fare.
Re: System loads web pages 34 percent faster by fetching files more effectively
#4> What Polaris does is automatically track all of the interactions between objects, which can number in the thousands for a single page. For example, it notes when one object reads the data in another object, or updates a value in another object. It then uses its detailed log of these interactions to create a “dependency graph” for the page.
> Mickens offers the analogy of a travelling businessperson. When you visit one city, you sometimes discover more cities you have to visit before going home. If someone gave you the entire list of cities ahead of time, you could plan the fastest possible route. Without the list, though, you have to discover new cities as you go, which results in unnecessary zig-zagging between far-away cities.
What a terrible analogy. Finding a topological sorting is O(|V|+|E|), while the traveling salesman problem is NP-complete.
Re: System loads web pages 34 percent faster by fetching files more effectively
#5So, uh, what does it do? I mean, I can't even tell if it's a server or client side change.
Re: System loads web pages 34 percent faster by fetching files more effectively
#6> What Polaris does is automatically track all of the interactions between objects, which can number in the thousands for a single page. For example, it notes when one object reads the data in another object, or updates a value in another object. It then uses its detailed log of these interactions to create a “dependency graph” for the page. > Mickens offers the analogy of a travelling businessperson. When you visit…
That's amusing, and I wonder if this particular analogy was chosen deliberately. But I don't think there's anything wrong with it - it's designed to make intuitive sense to non-programming readers, not to be some rigorous description that can be automatically translated into optimal code.
Re: System loads web pages 34 percent faster by fetching files more effectively
#7So, uh, what does it do? I mean, I can't even tell if it's a server or client side change.
It's in between. It's a way for website developers to explain the dependencies for the files (in html or JavaScript or whatever) and a change needed for browsers to know how to use this new data to make better requests to the server.
Re: System loads web pages 34 percent faster by fetching files more effectively
#8Interesting. The paper was released before HTTP/2 was in widespread use. They do show that their approach has significant improvements over SPDY alone...I wonder how the comparison to HTTP/2 alone would fare.
is there significant difference in performance between HTTP/2 and SPDY?
Re: System loads web pages 34 percent faster by fetching files more effectively
#9> What Polaris does is automatically track all of the interactions between objects, which can number in the thousands for a single page. For example, it notes when one object reads the data in another object, or updates a value in another object. It then uses its detailed log of these interactions to create a “dependency graph” for the page. > Mickens offers the analogy of a travelling businessperson. When you visit…
That's amusing, and I wonder if this particular analogy was chosen deliberately. But I don't think there's anything wrong with it - it's designed to make intuitive sense to non-programming readers, not to be some rigorous description that can be automatically translated into optimal code.
Perhaps a different analogy would be better, e.g. ordering materials when building a house. If you can only order one material at a time, you would probably want to order the concrete for laying the foundation before ordering the roof tiles. Loading website resources is a lot like that (at least compared to the travelling salesman).
Re: System loads web pages 34 percent faster by fetching files more effectively
#10Interesting. The paper was released before HTTP/2 was in widespread use. They do show that their approach has significant improvements over SPDY alone...I wonder how the comparison to HTTP/2 alone would fare.
is there significant difference in performance between HTTP/2 and SPDY?
There seems to be, yes. Surprisingly little information to be had though.
http://blog.httpwatch.com/2015/01/16/a-simple-performance-co...
I don't think server push was used in this benchmark, it's arguably a poor mans way to achieve part of what's discussed in the referenced paper (serving early dependencies...early).