Google is pushing for a faster web with an experimental new protocol named SPDY. Although it’s not a standard yet, if you’re using Chrome or Firefox, you’ve probably already experienced SPDY. After sitting for a while on my personal-backlog, I finally took a closer look at what’s going on here.
SPDY needs a SPDY client (Chrome or Firefox for now) and a SPDY compliant server (Apache works fine with the addition of a simple module - http://code.google.com/p/mod-spdy/). Client and Server work together to optimize performance by reducing network latency and SPDY does this using compression and multiplexing resource requests. It still runs over HTTP but because resource requests are multi-plexed you can get multiple resources in a single request.
SPDY also does smart things with the HTTP Headers like GZIP compressing them and caching headers, it can even pro-actively send stuff down from the server to the browser before it’s requested. You get all this for free, no code change required if you’re using Chrome/FF and Apache.
If you’re like me and you like to get under the covers, point Chrome to chrome://net-internals/ and then visit the test page. You’ll clearly see when SPDY is engaged and when it’s not.
Checkout the Test Page here: https://www.modspdy.com/world-flags/ - this loads 190+ images, try it in Chrome versus IE or if you don’t have a stopwatch handy checkout the video:
P.S. Regular viewers of BBC’s Top Gear will appreciate the irony of this posts’ image.