The Internet is a fascinating place. You can find a seemingly unlimited quantity of content, accessible from just about any device today. The fact that it’s getting faster every year allows publishers more leeway in how large webpages can be. However, even if most websites will load in a few seconds on a broadband connection, businesses should still be mindful of how much bandwidth they demand from their customers, especially with publishers now pushing a lot of rich content, and considering how slow some mobile connections can be.
For any business, customer satisfaction should be a priority. Thus, for a web publisher, it is important to ensure that websites load as quickly as possible, even if the difference is as small as half a second. The up-and-coming HTTP/2 protocol may present an answer to this with some refreshing improvements over HTTP 1.1. These improvements include minifying of data to optimize web traffic.
Published as an RFC in May of 2015, HTTP/2 is still in its nascent stage. Once browsers begin to adopt it, the updated web protocol may provide significant benefits to both publishers and users. It can also be advantageous to enterprises with Internet-based connectivity fully integrated within the company’s infrastructure.
What Are The Benefits?
The latest version of the HTTP protocol aims to remedy many of the problems that have been plaguing its predecessor, especially where asset-heavy websites are concerned. Since the early 2000s, many websites have begun sending very small packages of data containing a great many tiny assets. Each lump of data, no matter how small, needs its own dedicated request. HTTP/2 gets around this by minifying smaller data sets and clumping them up into a larger package so that more data can be crammed into one single request. This minimizes the amount of useless and extra information exchanged between servers and clients.
Capturing The Moment and Profiting Further Multiplexed streams, the ability to push messages directly to a browser without wasting bandwidth from periodic queries, and the compression of headers goes a very long way in ensuring that web applications run smoothly. However, we’re still not done talking about what a business can do to better serve its customer base. Combining the magic of HTTP/2 with a content delivery network (CDN) can also allow you to serve a global audience, delivering content more quickly from a geographically appropriate server.
For example, customers in Romania can receive data more rapidly from the Netherlands than if they would have to connect all the way to a server in New York. A globally-distributed CDN can improve website performance by 50% and reduce bandwidth use by 70%. According to research from Sandvine, rich media streaming services now account for 70% of Internet bandwidth in North America. This means apps like YouTube, Netflix, Spotify, and even the BitTorrent protocol, will require a much more efficient means of transporting data across clients.
The Future HTTP/2 presents a very big opportunity for businesses to serve their customers through the web, making it easier to maintain and run bandwidth-intensive websites. This will be especially important given the increasing role of rich media like videos and streaming content. Once browsers, webhosts and publishers start adopting this protocol as a standard, those who take the initiative to upgrade will reap some advantages in terms of performance.
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