Google just announced a new protocol, “SPDY” pronounced “SPeeDY” on Chromium blog. According to Google the new protocol will speed up the web. The protocol is not a replacement to the current protocol HTTP, but it will augment HTTP.
The protocol is designed specifically for minimizing latency through features such as multiplexed streams, request prioritization and HTTP header compression. We started working on SPDY while exploring ways to optimize the way browsers and servers communicate. We want to continue building on the web’s tradition of experimentation and optimization, to further support the evolution of websites and browsers. So over the last few months, a few of us here at Google have been experimenting with new ways for web browsers and servers to speak to each other, resulting in a prototype web server and Google Chrome client with SPDY support.
So how does it perform?. In Google’s testing page loading is improved 55% faster. They downloaded the top 25 websites over simulated network connections. These are internal tests and now Google wants the participation of the community so that they can get feedback and assistance from the web community.
If this announcement excites you here is the documentation, and current code can be seen here.
Google’s own browser Chrome is already a faster browser compared to other browsers, and SPDY gives the 55% improvement they claim it will be useful for the end user and also to Google, so that it’s cloud based apps like Google Docs and Picasa will run faster.
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[…] [GOOG] are on a quest to speed up the internet. Just recently they mentioned a new protocol called SPDY they have created that aims to speed up the way browsers get the data needed to render web pages by […]