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> there’s no real difference between downloading one big file and 100 little ones. Are you sure? Each separate download needs its own negotiation with the serv
by galaxyLogic 4y ago
> there’s no real difference between downloading one big file and 100 little ones.
Are you sure? Each separate download needs its own negotiation with the server. Each download needs its own request and response. So you would have 100 requests and 100 responses versus 1 request and 1 response.
It's the same difference as driving 100 cars vs. driving a train with 100 connected train-cars over a narrow bridge etc.
- WorldMaker 4y agoHTTP 1.0 when every request/response pair was a separate TCP connection certainly was a huge deal for one big file versus 100 little ones. HTTP 1.1 shifted the dynamic a bit, when properly configured. HTTP 2+ shift the dynamic a lot. When everything is a single reusable shared connection it's a lot more "100 connected train-cars". At that point it's more a matter of request/response header overhead. (And even there HTTP 2+ have interesting mitigations such as Brotli compression and common header dictionaries.) There's still some difference between one big file and 100 little ones in HTTP 2+, but things are much more complex and a lot of it does start to look like a "wash" (do whatever makes you happy to start, then performance test your specific scenarios once you've got a complete application).