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Web acceleration

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Pnm (talk | contribs) at 04:14, 6 February 2012 (Fix link to dab Cache). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Web acceleration is a service that accelerates the delivery of content from web sites to a computer user.

Theory

Web acceleration means web sites can be loaded faster, both for large file downloads and small images. Currently most pages on the internet have a Content Delivery Network (CDN) supporting their website. One of the functions of a CDN is to accelerate the content.

The primary method of acceleration is multiple, distributed caches. Most of the standard CDNs have a multitude of cache servers around the globe. This way, if the origin server (the website where the content exists) is in one location, the various cache servers across the world will get the content from the origin server and cache them in their memory (RAM or hard disk). Once the content exists on a cache server and a user near that cache requests the content, it can be delivered faster. The fact that the content is closer to the user reduces the routing distance, which saves network connection time.

In most CDNs, the content is cached in RAM which is optimized for speed and better performance. This provides faster access times than a hard disk cache.

Web acceleration can also support encryption of HTTPS content for secure access to web pages.

Performance

When evaluating a CDN's web acceleration, the following performance factors are considered:

  • response time is the most important criteria
  • number of simultaneous HTTP requests that a CDN can handle

A successful CDN optimizes performance by minimizing the response time while also maximizing the number of simultaneous HTTP requests per second.

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