HTTP 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

HTTP 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).