Re: Datalytics' xSpeed blazes through Web pages

Jim Whitehead (ejw@ics.uci.edu)
Mon, 25 Nov 1996 11:34:28 -0800


I see this more pessimistically:

>The obvious wins again. Strike one from the ideaLabs list :-)
>
>=95Standard compression technology that resides on the browser and server
>compresses only Web page files to benefit performance by reducing
>overhead.

This is good.

>=95Intelligent caching on the browser learns the pages a user accesses
>most and keeps them handy.

Still good.

>=95A feature that anticipates links a user could follow on a given Web
>page begins pre-loading those pages before the user clicks on the links.

This seems like a really bad idea. If every user running a browser is doing
HTTP communicaitons X% of the time their browser is running, this means
that each browser will now be performing HTTP communications X+n% of the
time. So in one fell swoop, this technology increases each browser's
contribution to net congestion.

>=95Page-streaming HTTP loads an entire Web page all in one shot rather
>than in intermittent connections.

Is this just a persistent connection? If a web page is larger than the
packet sizes between the client and server, you certainly can't load a web
page in one shot (whatever a shot is).

- Jim