Re: problem of amaya

In our previous episode, Jim Gettys said:

> > > i use amaya 1.2a version.
> > > but it has many problem.
> > > i describe some of them.
> > > one is that accessing speed for internet is very slow.
> > 
> > This concerns the http implementation. Amaya uses the libwww http 1.1
> > implementation.
> > I think that the access speed depends on the server protocol level.
> > Do you know if this occurs with a specific server or if is it slow with all
> > servers?
> > 
> 
> The HTTP/1.1 implementation is unlikely to be an issue; we don't believe
> there is any circumstance underwhich it should be slower than HTTP/1.0, and
> is generally faster. 

One situation in which HTTP/1.0 gives the illusion of being faster is when
you use libwww to access an HTTP/1.0 server. 

The libwww implementation is ressource friendly. When accesing an HTTP/1.1
server, libwww opens a single connection per site, then feeds all the
requests thru this connection (using Keep-Alive).

When accessing an HTTP/1.0 server, libwww is still ressource friendly in that
it only opens one connection per request to the server and will only open
a new connection when the previous one has finished. If you compare
this behavior with other browsers which open many parallel connections to
the same server, of course Amaya/libwww will appear to be much more slower.
Of course, opening parallel connections does have bad side-effects and that's
one of the things what HTTP/1.1 tries to solve.

So, what should we do with Amaya? Personally, I don't think it's efficient
to downgrade and try to use  parallel connections when talking with an
HTTP/1.0 server. My position is that old servers should be upgraded:

	* most current implementations of the servers can now understand
	  the Keep-Alive header. Many popular servers (e.g., Apache) now
          support HTTP/1.1

	* browsers lag will be reduced.

-Jose

Received on Friday, 24 April 1998 08:34:07 UTC