4 ms·
While many websites are bad for large unoptimized payloads sizes, they are even worse for latency sensitivity. You can easily see this when using WiFi aboard a
by Sanzig 1y ago
While many websites are bad for large unoptimized payloads sizes, they are even worse for latency sensitivity.
You can easily see this when using WiFi aboard a flight, where latency is around 600 msec at minimum (most airlines use geostationary satellites, NGSO for airline use isn't quite there yet). There is so much stuff that happens serially in back-and-forth client-server communication in modern web apps. The developer sitting in SF with a sub-10 ms latency to their development instance on AWS doesn't notice this, but it's sure as as heck noticeable when the round trip is 60x that. Obviously, some exchanges have to be serial, but there is a lot of room for optimization and batching that just gets left on the floor.
It's really useful to use some sort of network emulation tool like tc-netem as part of basic usability testing. Establish a few baseline cases (slow link, high packet loss, high latency, etc) and see how usable your service is. Fixing it so it's better in these cases will make it better for everyone else too.
- catwhatcat 1y agoNB modern browsers have a "throttling" dropdown/selector built-in to the dev tools (under 'network') alike tc-netem
- immibis 1y agoYou can also just live in New Zealand, where your minimum ping time to anywhere relevant is 200-300ms.
- ethan_smith 1y agoAbsolutely this. I've noticed more developers recently going back to basics - sites like gearscouts.com and diskprices.com are perfect examples. Zero React bloat, just clean HTML/CSS that loads instantly and works flawlessly even on sketchy connections. The information density is incredible compared to most modern sites. What kills me is that 90% of these heavy SPAs are doing pretty mundane stuff - showing product listings, displaying articles, basic forms. You really don't need a React framework plus a dozen dependencies just to show some images and text. The old "boring" approach of server-rendered pages with a sprinkle of vanilla JS actually provides a better UX for most use cases, especially when the network isn't perfect. The irony is that by chasing "modern" development practices, we've made the web worse for users while making it more complex for developers. Sometimes the simple solution really is the best solution. [1] https://gearscouts.com https://gearscouts.com [2] https://diskprices.com https://diskprices.com