SPDY: An experimental protocol for a faster web – The Chromium Projects

As part of the “Let’s make the web faster” initiative, we are experimenting with alternative protocols to help reduce the latency of web pages. One of these experiments is SPDY (pronounced “SPeeDY”), an application-layer protocol for transporting content over the web, designed specifically for minimal latency.  In addition to a specification of the protocol, we have developed a SPDY-enabled Google Chrome browser and open-source web server. In lab tests, we have compared the performance of these applications over HTTP and SPDY, and have observed up to 64% reductions in page load times in SPDY. We hope to engage the open source community to contribute ideas, feedback, code, and test results, to make SPDY the next-generation application protocol for a faster web.

via SPDY: An experimental protocol for a faster web – The Chromium Projects.

Google wants the World Wide Web to go faster. I think we all would like to have that as well. But what kind of heavy lifting is it going to take? The transition from Arpanet to the TCP/IP protocol took a very long time and required some heavy handed shoving to accomplish the cutover in 1984. We can all thank Vint Cerf for making that happen so that we could continue to grow and evolve as an online species (Tip of Hat). But now what? There’s been a move to evolved from TCP/IP version 4 to version 6 to accommodate the increase in number of network devices. Speed really wasn’t a consideration in that revision. I don’t know how this project integrates with TCP/IP vers. 6. But I hope maybe it can be pursued on a parallel course with the big migration to TCP/IP vers. 6.

What would be the worst thing that could happen is to create another Facebook/Twitter/Apple Store/Google/AOL cul-de-sac that only benefits the account holders loyal to Google. Yes it would be nice if Google Docs and all the other attendant services provided via/through Google got onboard the SPDY accelerator train. I would stand to benefit, but things like this should be pushed further up into the wider Internet so that everyone, everywhere has the same benefits. Otherwise this is an attempt to steal away user accounts and create churn in the competitors account databases.

Related articles

• How to View SPDY Sessions in Chrome (thechromesource.com)