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Leaving aside the technical statements about SPDY, the reality of HTTP pipelining is that no-one uses it. According to Wikipedia, Opera is the only major browse

by Lukasa 12y ago

Leaving aside the technical statements about SPDY, the reality of HTTP pipelining is that no-one uses it. According to Wikipedia, Opera is the only major browser that ships with pipelining enabled. Most intermediaries don't support pipelining either. Pipelining was a well-intentioned feature which didn't solve the core problem: namely, that a big or slow request can block you from doing anything else for a really long time unless you open another TCP connection.

mpweiher 12y ago
> the reality of HTTP pipelining is that no-one uses it. Hmmm, starting to use it seems like less effort than introducing an entirely new protocol. > the core problem: namely, that a big or slow request can block you from doing anything else Why is that the core problem?
- youngtaff 12y ago
  >> the core problem: namely, that a big or slow request can block you from doing anything else > Why is that the core problem? Head of line blocking leaves the network idle, and one of the key factors to good front end performance is to overcome network latency and start using the network / growing the congestion window as soon as possible.
bsdetector 12y ago
Except that Microsoft tested SPDY against pipelining and found that pipelining was essentially just as good. So we're left with a situation where Google could have used HTTP pipelining over SSL (so there's no buggy proxies interfering, just like what SPDY does) and gotten pretty much all the benefit with no extra complications at all, but instead there's old HTTP and a new, much more complicated protocol. And this "head of line blocking" problem... who said it was a problem, Google? In reality you have 4 or more connections that automatically work like spread spectrum where most resources aren't stuck behind a big or slow request. But even if this was an actual problem, a simple hint in the HTML that the resource might take a while and to put other ones on a separate connection would optionally solve this problem, and with almost no extra complexity.
- jgrahamc 12y ago
  Except that Microsoft tested SPDY against pipelining and found that pipelining was essentially just as good. Can you point to that?
  - youngtaff 12y ago
    I think parent is referring to http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/170059/A%20comparison%20of%20SPDY%20and%20HTTP%20performance.pdf http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/170059/A%20comparison%20o... It's a bit sketchy on the details and data - reading it I certainly end up with more questions than answers
- deleted 12y ago
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gsnedders 12y ago
I'm pretty sure Opera doesn't ship with it enabled any more, since the move to Chromium. There were all kinds of crazy heuristics to work out whether to use pipelining or not.

by Lukasa 12y ago

mpweiher 12y ago

> the reality of HTTP pipelining is that no-one uses it. Hmmm, starting to use it seems like less effort than introducing an entirely new protocol. > the core problem: namely, that a big or slow request can block you from doing anything else Why is that the core problem?

youngtaff 12y ago
>> the core problem: namely, that a big or slow request can block you from doing anything else > Why is that the core problem? Head of line blocking leaves the network idle, and one of the key factors to good front end performance is to overcome network latency and start using the network / growing the congestion window as soon as possible.

bsdetector 12y ago

Except that Microsoft tested SPDY against pipelining and found that pipelining was essentially just as good. So we're left with a situation where Google could have used HTTP pipelining over SSL (so there's no buggy proxies interfering, just like what SPDY does) and gotten pretty much all the benefit with no extra complications at all, but instead there's old HTTP and a new, much more complicated protocol. And this "head of line blocking" problem... who said it was a problem, Google? In reality you have 4 or more connections that automatically work like spread spectrum where most resources aren't stuck behind a big or slow request. But even if this was an actual problem, a simple hint in the HTML that the resource might take a while and to put other ones on a separate connection would optionally solve this problem, and with almost no extra complexity.

jgrahamc 12y ago
Except that Microsoft tested SPDY against pipelining and found that pipelining was essentially just as good. Can you point to that?
- youngtaff 12y ago
  I think parent is referring to http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/170059/A%20comparison%20of%20SPDY%20and%20HTTP%20performance.pdf http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/170059/A%20comparison%20o... It's a bit sketchy on the details and data - reading it I certainly end up with more questions than answers
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gsnedders 12y ago

I'm pretty sure Opera doesn't ship with it enabled any more, since the move to Chromium. There were all kinds of crazy heuristics to work out whether to use pipelining or not.