Concatenation, Embedding and Sharding: Do HTTP/1 Performance Best Practices Make Sense in HTTP/2?

Marx, Robin; Quax, Peter; Faes, Axel; Lamotte, Wim

doi:10.5220/0006364101600173

Cited by 4 publications

(10 citation statements)

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“…We found that the browser delays execution of all CSS until they have all been downloaded and processed for both h1 and h2, despite our experiments having been built specifically to prevent this. This is again unexpected browser behaviour (though probably not directly related to the h2 implementation) and we plan to look deeper into this in future work, as discussed in [18].…”

Section: Hol Blocking In Practice With Css and Javascriptmentioning

confidence: 86%

“…In this text, we continue the groundwork from our previous publications [17,18]. We discuss four HTTP/2 performance-related aspects and test their impact, both in synthetic and realistic test scenarios, in comparison with HTTP/1.1's performance (Sect.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 89%

“…In order to obtain these diverse test setup permutations, we use the Speeder framework for web performance measurement, previously introduced in [18]. Speeder provides pre-installed versions of a large amount of existing software packages (e.g., servers, browsers, network emulation tools, automated testing tools) that can be freely coupled to each other through the use of Docker containers 1 .…”

Section: Experimental Setup With the Speeder Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…h2 SpeedIndex for JavaScript indicates that it is much slower to start rendering than h1. Image taken from our previous work [18].…”

Section: Hol Blocking In Practice With Css and Javascriptmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…-We extend the Speeder framework for web performance measurement [18], combining a large number of off-the-shelf software packages to provide various test setup permutations, leading to a broad basis for comparison and interpretation of experimental results. -We compare h2 to h1 in both synthetic and realistic experiments and find that while h2 rarely significantly improves performance over h1, it is also rarely much slower.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Web Performance Characteristics of HTTP/2 and Comparison to HTTP/1.1

Marx

Wijnants

Quax

et al. 2018

Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing

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Abstract. The HTTP/1.1 protocol has long been a staple on the web, for both pages and apps. However, it has started to show its age, especially with regard to page load performance and the overhead it entails due to its use of multiple underlying connections. Its successor, the newly standardized HTTP/2, aims to improve the protocol's performance and reduce its overhead by (1) multiplexing multiple resources over a single TCP connection, (2) by using advanced prioritization strategies and by introducing new features such as (3) Server Push and (4) HPACK header compression. This work provides an in-depth overview of these four HTTP/2 performance aspects, discussing both synthetic and realistic experiments, to determine the gains HTTP/2 can provide in comparison to HTTP/1.1 in various settings. We find that the single multiplexed connection can actually become a significant performance bottleneck in poor network conditions with high packet loss and that HTTP/2 rarely improves much on HTTP/1.1, except in terms of reduced overhead. Prioritization strategies, Server Push and HPACK compression are found to have a relatively limited impact on web performance, but together with other observed HTTP/2 performance problems this could also be due to faulty current implementations, of which we have discovered various examples.

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Section: Hol Blocking In Practice With Css and Javascriptmentioning

confidence: 86%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 89%

Section: Experimental Setup With the Speeder Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…h2 SpeedIndex for JavaScript indicates that it is much slower to start rendering than h1. Image taken from our previous work [18].…”

Section: Hol Blocking In Practice With Css and Javascriptmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Web Performance Characteristics of HTTP/2 and Comparison to HTTP/1.1

Marx

Wijnants

Quax

et al. 2018

Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing

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HTTP/2 Prioritization and its Impact on Web Performance

Wijnants

Marx

Quax

et al. 2018

Proceedings of the 2018 World Wide Web Conference on World Wide Web - WWW '18

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Web performance is a hot topic, as many studies have shown a strong correlation between slow webpages and loss of revenue due to user dissatisfaction. Front and center in Page Load Time (PLT) optimization is the order in which resources are downloaded and processed. The new HTTP/2 speciication includes dedicated resource prioritization provisions, to be used in tandem with resource multiplexing over a single, well-illed TCP connection. However, little is yet known about its application by browsers and its impact on page load performance.This article details an extensive survey of modern User Agent implementations, with the conclusion that the major vendors all approach HTTP/2 prioritization in widely diferent ways, from naive (Safari, IE, Edge) to complex (Chrome, Firefox). We investigate the performance efect of these discrepancies with a full-factorial experimental evaluation involving eight prioritization algorithms, two of-the-shelf User Agents, 40 realistic webpages, and ive heterogeneous (emulated) network conditions. We ind that in general the complex approaches yield the best results, while naive schemes can lead to over 25% slower median visual load times. Also, prioritization is found to matter most for heavy-weight pages. Finally, it is ascertained that achieving PLT optimizations via generic serverside HTTP/2 re-prioritization schemes is a non-trivial task and that their performance is inluenced by the implementation intricacies of individual browsers.

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