As we’ve mentioned in a few recent blog posts, the Replify office has a great city centre location. Close to plenty of shops, bars, restaurants etc. Which proves convenient at lunchtimes when I like to stretch my legs, go to my regular place, and take my lunch back to the office. While there are lots of options available, I tend to keep going back to the same places again and again. This is quite similar to protocol optimization.
My experience consists of going to my favourite Lebanese restaurant that do a great takeaway lunch deal (a wrap, chips and a drink for £5). I’ve been going there for years and I usually plump for a Kafta wrap with extra garlic sauce, chips and a Coke.
A normal person would go into the restaurant, look at the menu, decide what they want, order it and wait for it to be cooked. The owner would tell them it was ready and ask what drink the customer wanted. The customer would answer and the owner would tell him the bill will be £5. The customer would find the money, pay and be on their way. This is probably how most of their customers conduct business.
However, when I go there, things are much more efficient. I enter the restaurant and say Hello. They ask if I want the usual. I usually tell them that I do, They cook it, and tell me it is ready and give me a can of Coke. I give them £5 and go on my way. I’m such an easy customer to deal with as I save them time. *
Browser Connections
Similarly, when you ask your browser to load a web-page, it is a similar process. The browser has to establish contact with the web server tell it; what user agent it is using, what types of pages it can accept and ask for a URL. The web server may ask for authentication details and then send on the content of URL along with details as the type of content contained and how it is encoded.
Also you should remember, the browser generally doesn’t just request a single web page. It will make a separate request for each resource in the web page. (e.g. Each image, script file, stylesheet etc) Each of these requests will have to go through the same convoluted process.
If Replify Accelerator is installed, it will realise the browser is “speaking” HTTP and will invoke its HTTP protocol handler functionality. This will act in a similar way to me ordering my lunch and prevent the formalities for each request from using up valuable bandwidth. However, the end page that the browser receives will still be the same.
Protocol Optimization
This protocol optimization can save maybe 100 bytes for each web request. This isn’t a massive amount, but when you consider; a web page could have over 100 resources; a user could visit an optimized page tens of times a day; multiple users could visit – the amount of data saved through protocol optimization alone can start to be significant.
In addition to protocol optimization, Replify Accelerator will also compress the actual body of the request. This helps to retrieve previously understood data from its cache which will be the main contributor to the WAN offload.
If you want to know more about how our HTTP protocol optimization works or where the Lebanese restaurant is located please contact sales@replify.com for more information.