WWW Speed List

NOTE Note: Last updated Oct 1994.

This announcment was made by Simon Spero, ses%tipper@tipper.oit.unc.edu:

Good evening one and all, and welcome to www-speed.

The list address is

	www-speed@tipper.oit.unc.edu

The request address is

	www-speed-request@tipper.oit.unc.edu

This list is dedicated to the proposition that the web is just too darned slow, and that some of its key components have inherent performance problems that cannot be dealt with without changes to protocols.

Topics appropriate to the list are:

Performance issues in existing implementations
Managing busy servers
Benchmarking servers
High performance Server design
High speed (130Mbps+) issues
Client implementation
HTTP - beyond 1.0
Other performance and scalability issues

Initially, I plan to be concentrating on issues related to the HTTP protocol. I will be sending a series of messages over the next few days analysing the performance implications of HTTP, and discussing several alternatives that have been proposed to improve performance.

The first post will cover the problems with HTTP/0.9 and HTTP/1.0. This will be followed by a comparison of several proposed changes to HTTP to alleviate these problems. I'll then wrap up with more detailed coverage of the FHTTP protocol I mooted briefly on www-talk.

	I feel the need - the need for speed

October 1994