Complete introduction to optimizing web site performance

For an e-commerce website, the minimum bandwidth and server resources need to be used to provide faster services for more customers. Users' Satisfaction with the web site is mainly measured by the access speed.

From the user's point of view, the Web site can only be divided into "fast" and "slow". Users often do not require large data transmission, but want the website to ensure performance while, it can accommodate more visitors. The core concern of Web users is access time. From the perspective of network maintenance, there are many potential causes of latency. In general, you can improve the performance of the web site from five aspects: buffer, compression, CPU optimization, use of content delivery network (CDN) and client software.

When a site has too many users, the server will be overloaded and the site speed will also decrease. If you add servers and use Server Load balancer or cluster solutions, you can increase the Website access traffic and the site performance can reach an acceptable level. However, it is often the case that the end user can get a fast access speed, but the expected access capacity does not reach, so we should first consider improving the website performance. By limiting the access traffic to the server, avoiding full server buffering, or using the pure CDN mode, the Page Submission speed can be improved, and the site can accommodate more users.

Optimize server configurations

Using faster disks and better network access mechanisms can significantly improve website access speeds. You can use a specific NIC (such as akamba's velobahn) to speed up the server or use related technologies to optimize the performance of the network interface card. The core of such solutions is to reduce the CPU load of web servers and "free" them from tedious network protocol processing, and focus on page processing and service provision.

To improve server performance as much as possible, it is essential to use mature web server acceleration software. In the next few years, web server tools with low costs, high optimization, and embedded operating systems will emerge.

BUFFER MECHANISM

Another way to optimize the network scalability and performance is to add a buffer mechanism on the periphery of the server. A popular solution is to add a reverse buffer proxy for the Web server so that the server can smoothly transfer the created page and reduce the server load during the creation of dynamic pages.

The buffer mechanism is easy to implement. You can build a proxy on your own.ProgramYou can also use other hardware-based products, such as cobalt Networks Products cacheraq and cacheflow's high-end buffer tool CacheOS. However, pay attention to the fact that many hardware buffer products are actually running software on Linux servers to implement the buffer function. Because the buffer mechanism usually cannot well process the dynamically generated content, the usage is declining. For real-time dynamic pages, if buffering is used, the display speed slows down significantly.
User-centric

Communication and transmission are the most important issues to be solved by the network. Any network manufacturer must face the difficulties in communication and routing. To make a website "close" to users, you have to work hard on the communication and transmission solution.

You can set up multiple servers in the access interval and use global Load Balancing Devices, such as radware's Web Server pilot to optimize routes so that users can access nearby sites. You can also use CDN, for example, the Akamai or solidspeed solution places a large number of dynamic page objects, images and PDF files in a buffer close to the user, so that users can access the website content nearby.

If you make full use of edge network systems (such as CDN), web page content will soon reach the user end, and there will be much less communication problems. However, the implementation cost of the CDN service is often high, and the acceleration page must be rewritten into the relevant buffer target during the operation, resulting in a certain delay. The recently released edge inclusion (Esi) Specification can effectively solve the problem of handling dynamic page content generated when CDN is used. Once the network cost is reduced, this type of solution will make EDGE network transmission the mainstream.

Reduce data volume

Compressing the transmitted data improves the access speed. Generally, a large amount of content transmitted on Web pages is composed of image files and other binary files. Currently, Web developers are trying to reduce the color usage of GIF files, and adjust the size of JPEG files.

Although the higher level of Image File compression specifications, the advent of the 2000is still time-consuming, but the continuous improvement of the browser function makes it possible to quickly display images on the network. For users who need to transmit large-capacity graphics files, they can choose a more advanced image format without sticking to the standard Web format, such as the mrsid and djvu standards released by lizardtech for commercial purposes.

As HTML documents become increasingly complex and JavaScript is widely used, page size can be greatly reduced by compressing pages by reducing the space in HTML or Javascript documents. Based on this method, the browser that supports http1.1 can support GZIP file encoding at the same time and compress the file before transmission. Some Web servers, such as Microsoft iis5.0, support this solution.

It is generally believed that a small amount of data means that the website can transmit data quickly. However, the time required for compressing or Uncompressing a file must be considered for a specific transmission object, and the bandwidth used for highly compressing files may be small, but it may not be able to be quickly submitted to end users.

Client factors cannot be ignored

Without the coordination of client operations, compression, distribution, buffering, and other solutions will not work. The Web user access mode is generally "Click-wait-idle-click". In fact, the idle time can be used to download the content. If such software is installed on the client, the website performance can be greatly improved.

Finally, the customer terminal system configuration is the key, and the site administrator can hardly exert any influence on the client settings. The page cannot be submitted quickly, probably because it is completely on the client: the terminal system configuration is weak, the application runs too much, the disk access speed is too slow, or the browser speed is low. For example, when people talk about site speed, they often ignore the important factor of browsers. When talking about browsers, people naturally think of IE or Netscape, in fact, Opera Software's 5.0 browser is much faster.