[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message]

Re: Generality of HTTP

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: Re: Generality of HTTP
• From: Gavin Thomas Nicol <gtn@r...>
• Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 13:31:30 -0500
• In-reply-to: <A63Y3VD0U4252YW5ZSMA9TOMGAOKYT.3c4ed95b@MChamp>
• Organization: Red Bridge Interactive, Inc.
• References: <A63Y3VD0U4252YW5ZSMA9TOMGAOKYT.3c4ed95b@MChamp>

On Wednesday 23 January 2002 10:40 am, Mike Champion wrote:
> Stealing a page from Tim Bray's hymnal <grin>, I feel compelled to
> ask:  Is there solid, empirical, profiling evidence that the TCP
> substrate of HTTP is a significant bottleneck in real web
> applications?  Optimizing non-bottlenecks is a well-known
> temptation...

Yes. Lot's of empirical data showing it to be slow, and lot's of 
cases, where in reality, it has caused problems... or at least 
redesign to work around it's problems.

> The network effect (literally and figuratively) behind TCP and HTTP
> is a terrible thing to waste.

That's kind of specious reasoning though: you could easily have said 
the same thing about gopher and ftp in the early days of the WWW.

Software, in general, has a fairly short shelf life (unless it's a 
pretty well understood domain to begin with). As you modify/evolve it, 
mutations/inefficiencies creep in to the point where you really are 
better off tossing it away and starting afresh. Maybe the WWW is 
starting to reach that point... or maybe it's reaching the point where 
HTML/HTTP vs anything else is largely irrelevant. perhaps people just 
want to leverage ubiquitous networks, read email *use* the network.

One way or another, my sense is that we are stagnating.

• References:
  • RE: Generality of HTTP
    • From: Mike Champion <mc@x...>

• Prev by Date: Re: Better is better
• Next by Date: Re: RDDL and document types was : Re: The task to be solved by RDDL.
• Previous by thread: RE: Generality of HTTP
• Next by thread: RE: Generality of HTTP
• Index(es):
  • Date
  • Thread