Re: HTTP: T-T-T-Talking about MIME Generation

According to Jim Seidman:
> John Franks writes:
> >Correct me if I am wrong, but I concluded from Spero's postings that
> >nothing currently proposed including MGET, hold-open, or even HTTP-NG
> >would improve (or even match?) the user's perceived performance
> >currently given by Netscape.  By this I mean the ellapsed time until
> >the user can start reading *all the text* and the ellapsed time until
> >the user can jump to a new link.
> 
> I have to disagree here.  If the issue is how quickly all the text can be
> downloaded, then the fastest way to do this is to send only the text and
> then pass on the images later.  Especially for users on slower connections
> (such as the ever-mentioned 14.4 SLIP connection) there is a notable
> degradation in getting all of the text if several images are being sent
> simultaneously.
> 

The fastest way to get all the text is to send it first but it can't be
displaye until layout information like the size and shape of all images is 
known.  This is the point of the Netscape multiple connections.  They get
the first few bits of each image which contain the size information.

> 
> In my mind the only defensible reason for simultaneous connections is to
> reduce the round trip time penalty for loading all the pieces of a document.
> However there are already several discussions taking place here about other
> ways to minimize the RTT issues.  Even something as trivial as having a
> keep-alive and allowing the client to buffer up requests for images as it's
> downloading the text would provide a major improvement.
> 

>From the *user's* perspective this would be *much slower*.  The user 
couldn't read past the first image or jump to another link until everything
has been downloaded.


John Franks

Received on Friday, 16 December 1994 09:41:17 UTC