Google is working on a new web protocol called SPDY (pronounced “SPeeDY”) that is likely to drastically improve the speed of delivering content over Internet. In fact, Google has already conducted successful experiments in lab conditions and has now released the first documentation about its proposed SPDY protocol and it has also released the client-side source code for this project to the web community for review, feedback and contribution towards the project.
So, will SPDY protocol replace the existing HTTP protocol and do we have to start typing web addresses as “spdy://www.techsuperb.com” instead of “http://www.techsuperb.com” for accessing them on the web? Don’t worry. There are no such plans, in spite of the fact that the vague language used by Google led to some confusion in this regard; look at the following sample:
“We started working on SPDY while exploring ways to optimize the way browsers and servers communicate. Today, web clients and servers speak HTTP. HTTP is an elegantly simple protocol that emerged as a web standard in 1996 after a series of experiments. HTTP has served the web incredibly well. We want to continue building on the web’s tradition of experimentation and optimization, to further support the evolution of websites and browsers. So over the last few months, a few of us here at Google have been experimenting with new ways for web browsers and servers to speak to each other, resulting in a prototype web server and Google Chrome client with SPDY support.”
SPDY is an application-layer protocol for transporting content over the web from the web servers to the clients such as the browsers on user computers. It appears to be aimed at improving speed of the HTTP protocol due to its having been designed for minimal latency. Google has also developed a SPDY-enabled Google Chrome browser and an open-source web server that can implement SPDY protocol.
During testing in lab conditions, comparison of the performance of the above client-server applications over HTTP and SPDY showed up to 64% reductions in page load times in SPDY, implying more than double the current speed of delivering content over the Internet.
The main three high-level goals for SPDY set by Google are as under:
Thus, there will be no changes to the existing networking infrastructure and likewise, website publishers need not worry since there would be no changes required for their contents. SPDY will work directly “between” the client user agent and the web server application.
However, these are early stages for a protocol. It has to gain wide acceptability from all stake-holders and participants of the web environment, including Google’s rivals. It is due to this very reason that Google has kept the fourth high level goal of SPDY as under:
“To bring together like-minded parties interested in exploring protocols as a way of solving the latency problem. We hope to develop this new protocol in partnership with the open-source community and industry specialists.”
However, from a cursory look at the documentation at this early stage (though it is too early to say exactly), it appears that even if other parties do not cooperate, Google can perhaps implement this protocol in its own SPDY-enabled servers and its own SPDY-enabled Chrome browser to show-case the speed improvements. This appears to be possible for the simple reason that the existing web content need not be changed and the existing networking infrastructure is not required to be changed. This protocol can work “between” the existing protocols to improve the speed. What SPDY protocol basically tries to do is: (i) to allow many concurrent HTTP requests to run across a single TCP session; (ii) to reduce the bandwidth currently used by HTTP by compressing headers and eliminating unnecessary headers; (iii) to reduce the complexity of HTTP by cutting down on edge cases and defining easily parsed message formats. It may perhaps be possible to perform these tasks (especially the first and second) without interfering much with the HTTP code as it appears to the users, since these changes could take place directly in the interactions between the browser and the server.
Anyway, we’ll have to wait for more details and more time to fully understand the implications and the consequences of the new proposed protocol. But, if it is accepted ultimately by all stake-holders and if it really make the Internet “SPeeDY”, users would definitely welcome that. And, of course, Google will be a major beneficiary due to faster delivery of its ads as well as the web pages on which the ads are served, as also due to reduction in bandwidth usage of its huge server network.
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