Five aspects of improving Web site performance _ server

For an E-commerce site, the need to use the least bandwidth and server resources for more customers to provide faster service. The user's satisfaction with the Web site is mainly measured by the speed of the visit.

From the user's point of view, the Web site is only "fast" and "slow" points, users often do not require large-capacity data transfer, but hope that the site in the performance of the same time, can accommodate more visitors. The essence of the problem that Web users care about is access time. From the network maintenance point of view, the potential factors that lead to delay are manifold, in general, can improve the performance of the Web site from 5 aspects: Buffering, compression, CPU optimization, the use of content distribution network (CDN) and client software.

When a site accesses too many users, the server overloads and the site slows down. If you add servers and use load balancing or clustering schemes, you can increase the amount of site traffic and the performance of your site to an acceptable level. However, it is often the case that end users can obtain faster access speed, and the expected access capacity is not up to, so you should first consider improving the performance of the site. By restricting the amount of access to the server, avoiding a full buffer of the server, or using a pure CDN model, you can increase the page submission speed and the site can accommodate more users.

Optimizing Server Configuration
Using faster disk and better network access mechanisms can significantly improve the speed of Web site access. You can use specific network adapters, such as the Akamba Company's Velobahn, to improve the speed of your server, or to optimize the performance of your network interface cards with related technologies. The core of such schemes is to try to reduce the load on the Web server CPU, to "release" from the cumbersome network protocol processing, and to focus on page processing and service delivery.

To improve server performance as much as possible, the use of sophisticated Web server acceleration software is essential, and in the next few years, Low-cost, highly optimized, embedded operating system Web server tools will appear.

Using the buffer mechanism
Another way to optimize the scalability and performance of the network is to increase the buffering mechanism on the perimeter of the server. The more popular scenario is to add a reverse buffering agent for the Web server to enable the server to successfully implement the transfer of the created page while reducing the server load during the creation of dynamic pages.

Buffering is easy to implement, you can build your own agent, you can also use other hardware-based products, such as cobalt networks products Cacheraq, Cacheflow Company's high-end buffer tool Cacheos. However, it should be noted that many hardware buffer products are actually running software on Linux servers to implement buffering functions. Because the buffering mechanism does not normally handle dynamically generated content well, the application is now declining. For real-time dynamic pages, if the use of buffering, the display speed will be significantly slowed down.

User-centric
Communication transmission is a network to solve the most important issue, any network vendors have to face the problem of communication and routing, to make a website to "close" users, we have to work on communication transmission programs.

You can set up multiple servers in the access interval and use global load balancing devices, such as the Radware Company's Web server guide, to optimize routing so that users can access the nearest site, or you can use CDN, such as Akamai or solidspeed schemes, by moving a large number of dynamic page objects, such as images and PDF files placed close to the user's buffer, so that users achieve the site content of the nearest access.

If the full use of edge network systems (such as CDN), Web page content will quickly reach the user side, facing communication problems will be much less. However, the cost of CDN service is often very high, and the acceleration page must be rewritten to the related buffering target, which causes a certain delay. The recently released Edge Inclusion (ESI) specification is a good solution to the problem of handling dynamic page content that arises when using CDN. Once the cost of the network declines, such schemes will make the transmission of the edge network mainstream.

Reduce the amount of data
Compressing the transmitted data can improve the access speed. In general, a large number of Web page transfer content is composed of image files and other binary format files; Now Web developers are trying to reduce the use of GIF files for color and adjust the size of JPEG files.

Although a higher level of picture file compression specification JPEG2000 time, but the continuous improvement of browser function to make the network graphics and images of the rapid display possible. For users who need to transfer large graphics files, you can choose a more advanced image format without sticking to the standard web format, such as the MRSID and DjVu standards issued by LizardTech company for commercial use.

As HTML documents become more complex and JavaScript is used heavily, compressing pages by reducing whitespace in HTML or JavaScript documents can greatly reduce file size. Based on this approach, browsers that support HTTP1.1 can support gzip file encoding at the same time, compressing files before transmission. Some Web servers, such as Microsoft IIS5.0, support this scenario.

Generally understood that the small amount of data means that the Web site transmission speed, but specific to a transmission object, must consider the time factor compression/decompression, the high compression file used to the bandwidth may be less, but not necessarily can be quickly submitted to the end user.

Cannot ignore the client factor
Without coordinated client-side operations, compression, distribution, buffering, and other solutions will not work. The mode of Web user access is generally "click-Wait-Idle-click", which can actually take advantage of idle time to download content. If this type of software is installed on the client side, it can greatly improve the performance of the website.

Finally, the client terminal system configuration is critical, and the site administrator can hardly exert any impact on the client settings. Pages cannot be submitted quickly, perhaps because of the client: Terminal system configuration is fragile, the application is running too high, disk access is too slow, or the browser is low speed. For example, when people talk about the speed of a site, they tend to overlook the important factor of browsers; When you bring up browsers, people naturally think of IE or Netscape, and the fact that Opera Software's version 5.0 browser is much faster.
(Source: China Computer newspaper)