Re: Use hash to reduce traffic

Tim Tailor writes:

    I just had an idea how traffic on the web could be dramatically
    reduced.  May be that it is already implemented in some way and I
    just do not know about it.

    Now the idea:  Integrate a request command to http which will be
    replied by the hash of the page only. Based on this information the
    webbrowser or proxy could decide whether it needs to download the
    whole page or not. Moreover a html tag could indicate pseudo-new
    information like timestamps and make this hash even more
    effective.

See this paper:

	Terence Kelly and Jeffrey Mogul.
	"Aliasing on the World Wide Web:
		Prevalence and Performance Implications."
	In Proc. 11th Intl. World Wide Web Conf., pages 281-292.
	Honolulu, HI, May, 2002.
	http://www2002.org/CDROM/refereed/525.pdf

especially section 7.

We've been working on a more complete paper about this idea, but
it's been a spare-time activity and neither of us has had enough
spare time.

Scott Lawrence writes:

	RFC 2616, section 14.19

Nope, this doesn't solve the aliasing problem.  And if you
reply "RFC 2616, section 14.15" then I would rebut with
"RFC 3230".

-Jeff

Received on Monday, 5 May 2003 20:21:51 UTC