HTTP/1.1 has been a pretty good protocol, but it does have some issues in regards to performance. It leads to additional HTTP requests, usually repeating some of the information sent in each request. It also requires one request finish before the next one begins. HTTP/2 aims to correct these issues.
Category: Web Design
HTTP Caching And Cache Validation Over HTTP/1.1
Most of the resources of an HTML page don’t change from day to day. Yesterday’s CSS files are probably the same ones in place today. The same is true for any included Javascript files. I’m also guessing you don’t swap out images on web pages all that often either. So why make browsers download all these resources again the next time they visit the page?
The Performance Of HTTP Requests Over HTTP/1.1
How much do you know about HTTP? I’m sure you know it’s at the front of every URL, whether you type it or not, but do you know what version of HTTP your site uses or the difference in performance by switching to HTTPS?
How To Leverage DNS Caching
One of the recurring themes in this series and many articles about performance is caching. Serving cached content often leads to significant performance improvements as it saves round trips and thus time over a network.
How DNS Lookups Affect Website Performance
Resolving a domain name into an IP address is probably not a performance bottleneck for your site. To be honest, there are limited performance gains to be had with DNS lookups. That said, I think there are some good reasons to understand DNS better both in general and in terms of performance.