Top all-time · #3122
Guy's Pod
Guy's Pod is a personal blog at guypo.com about web. Since 2012, 25 different Hacker News readers have linked it 25 times, most often “Not as SPDY as You Thought”. The last post was in 2014, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (13) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Guy's Pod posts are technical benchmarks and analyses of web protocols, notably the "Not as SPDY as you thought" test of SPDY versus HTTPS and HTTP. Commenters cite them in HTTP/2 discussions.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 13 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Thoughts and research on Web Performance & Security
Most-linked posts?
- Not as SPDY as You Thought11 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2012-06-12
- HTTP Pipelining – Not So Fast…(Nor Slow) 3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2012-07-26
- IOS Browsers Speed Bakeoff2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-04-17
What Hacker News says?
My sibling has already pointed out one of the better critiques I've seen. There is also http://www.guypo.com/technical/not-as-spdy-as-you-thought/ , which I believe has been discussed on HN before, but I'm on a pomodoro break, so I'm trying to keep this short. One critique that I don't remember if is contained in either of these two is header compression. Header compression seems to make sense, as compression is goo…
Comment linking /technical/not-as-spdy-as-you-thought/
on “HTTP 2.0”Submitted Not as SPDY as You Thought as a story · 37 points
HN discussionI can point you to a benchmark that disagrees. http://www.guypo.com/not-as-spdy-as-you-thought/ . I promise you that I've considered the spec and its implications. Where are we now?
Comment linking /not-as-spdy-as-you-thought/
on “Hello HTTP/2, Goodbye SPDY”Submitted Not as SPDY as You Thought as a story · 27 points
HN discussionProof: http://www.guypo.com/technical/not-as-spdy-as-you-thought/
Comment linking /technical/not-as-spdy-as-you-thought/
on “SPDY Review by Opera Software”Submitted Responsive Web Design is bad for performance as a story · 4 points
HN discussionFor Google, a .0001% reduction in user overhead may translate to millions of dollars of resource savings. Google is willing to do crazy things like run their own modified Linux kernel that most companies wouldn't bother with. What is the end-user benefit in performance using HTTP 2.0? The only analysis of SPDY I saw indicated low single digit percentage benefit vs HTTPS. Whoop-dee-do. http://www.guypo.com/technical/…
Comment linking /technical/not-as-spdy-as-you-thought/
on “The 7-bit Internet”Submitted HTTP Pipelining – Not So Fast…(Nor Slow) as a story · 4 points
HN discussionI think they're talking about this: Not as SPDY as you thought : http://www.guypo.com/technical/not-as-spdy-as-you-thought/ The guy seems to know what he's talking about, and has actually run some tests but the test setup seems kind of weird. Effectively he's saying "if you only change HTTP to SPDY and make no other changes, then it's 3% slower (though more secure)" or "if you only change HTTPS to SPDY and make no o…
Comment linking /technical/not-as-spdy-as-you-thought/
on “Google is working on creating a new protocol named QUIC to replace UDP”Submitted HTTP/2.0 is good news for CDNs and FEO as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI'm a bit confused that multiplexing over one TCP connection is somehow seen as a strength of this new protocol. OK. I see how muxing streams over a TCP session theoretically allows the TCP session to "fill" the available bandwidth for a longer period of time. But it also means that every stream in the session will suffer from a few packet drops (and the resultant "sputtering" slow starts over lossy physical media,…
Comment linking /technical/not-as-spdy-as-you-thought/
on “Making HTTP realtime with HTTP 2.0”Submitted IOS Browsers Speed Bakeoff as a story · 2 points
HN discussionApparently "connection: keep-alive" is needed to enable pipelining in the browsers: http://www.guypo.com/http-pipelining-big-in-mobile/
Comment linking /http-pipelining-big-in-mobile/
on “Go HTTP2 demo”Submitted HTTP Pipelining Does Not Make any Difference as a story · 2 points
HN discussionIt means javascript execution is slower in 3rd-party browsers. They can make up for that by e.g. using better networking libraries: http://www.guypo.com/mobile/ios-browsers-speed-bakeoff/
Comment linking /mobile/ios-browsers-speed-bakeoff/
on “New iPad browser from Opera”Submitted Not as SPDY as You Thought as a story · 2 points
HN discussionHead of line blocking is when something ahead in the line blocks things behind it. If browsers choose to use connection limits, then that means that things ahead in the line and get to use the connections are blocking things behind in line which have to stay queued up waiting for the connections to free up. So yes, that's head of line blocking. As for pipelining working great in those browsers, you should note that…
Comment linking /technical/http-pipelining-not-so-fast-nor-slow/
on ““SPDY does not clearly outperform HTTP over cellular networks” [pdf]”Submitted RWD and “One Web” Adoption Rates as a story · 1 points
HN discussionhttp://www.guypo.com/technical/not-as-spdy-as-you-thought/ The results show SPDY, on average, is only about 4.5% faster than plain HTTPS, and is in fact about 3.4% slower than unencrypted HTTP. This means SPDY doesn’t make a material difference for page load times, and more specifically does not offset the price of switching to SSL.
Comment linking /technical/not-as-spdy-as-you-thought/
on “HTTP 2.0 Draft – SPDY Protocol”Submitted Top 5 tips for making fast responsive design sites as a story · 1 points
HN discussionTried to find where you pulled this number. This study seems in-line with your hypothesis (it states a gain over HTTPS, and a loss over HTTP): http://www.guypo.com/technical/not-as-spdy-as-you-thought/
Comment linking /technical/not-as-spdy-as-you-thought/
on “HN no longer supporting SPDY”Submitted Akamai IO – Going Global as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSPDY is a good idea in general, but the average web site shouldn't be expected to see the same gains that a Google property (which is tuned like a mofo and which is usually hosted entirely through Google-controlled domains) will: http://www.guypo.com/technical/not-as-spdy-as-you-thought/ HTTP's high-frequency back-and-forth shuffle is a good thing to eliminate, but most of the time, there are more serious bottleneck…
Comment linking /technical/not-as-spdy-as-you-thought/
on “Making the web faster with SPDY and HTTP/2”Submitted Introducing LQIP – Low Quality Image Placeholders as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSo? "The results show SPDY, on average, is only about 4.5% faster than plain HTTPS, and is in fact about 3.4% slower than unencrypted HTTP" -- http://www.guypo.com/technical/not-as-spdy-as-you-thought/
Comment linking /technical/not-as-spdy-as-you-thought/
on “Apple.com Does Not Support SPDY”
