Posted on 08/22/2017 10:42:23 AM PDT by Red Badger
Despite that most web traffic today comes from smartphones and tablets, the mobile web remains inconveniently slow. Even on fast 4G networks, a page takes 14 seconds to load on average—an eternity in today's connected world.
A team of computer science researchers at the University of Michigan and MIT has found a way to dramatically speed up the mobile web. Their new Vroom software prototype works by optimizing the end-to-end interaction between mobile devices and web servers. They tested the software on 100 popular news and sports websites, and they found that Vroom cut in half the median load time on landing pages—from 10 seconds to 5.
"Vroom dramatically improves upon solutions such as proxy servers, which come with security and privacy concerns. And it complements solutions such as Google's Accelerated Mobile Pages project, which requires web pages to be rewritten. For any particular version of a web page, Vroom optimizes the process of loading that page," said Harsha Madhyastha, U-M associate professor of computer science and engineering and one of Vroom's developers.
Why the mobile web is slow
A key reason for the lag on mobile sites is that, even when a user visits a mobile-optimized page, the browser must incrementally discover, download and process close to 100 URLs—the resources that constitute the page—before that page fully reveals itself.
"A lot needs to be bound and assembled, especially on sports and news pages with live content and personalized ads," said Vaspol Ruamviboonsuk, U-M doctoral student in computer science and engineering who led the development of Vroom. "When a browser begins to load a page, all it knows is the main URL. Everything else, it has to discover on its own through multiple rounds of parsing and executing code to determine all the assets it needs."
This back-and-forth is necessary because both the central processing units and the networks of mobile devices are much slower than their counterparts on desktop and laptop machines. As a result, the mobile device's CPU sits idle and underutilized while requests and responses are transferred to servers over the cellular network.
One could rely on proxy servers to accelerate websites. Proxies essentially act as virtual CPUs, building out pages before transferring them to the browser. But they compromise security and privacy. They intercept HTTPS content and require access to a user's cookies.
The Vroom solution
In contrast, the new Vroom architecture bundles together resources that browsers will need to fully load pages. When a web server receives a request from a browser, in addition to returning the requested resource, the server also informs the browser about other dependent resources it will need to fetch.
Vroom takes a three-pronged approach to accomplishing this.
First, it augments HTTP responses with custom headers in order to push dependent resources. In the case of third-party content, which is common on web pages, Vroom doesn't deliver the resources, but instead sends "dependency hints" in the form of URLs for resources that the browser should fetch. This maintains security, but still allows web servers to personalize the information that's sent back, which is useful, for example, on news sites that recommend different stories to different users.
Second, Vroom makes web servers capable of identifying what resources and dependency hints make sense for the server to pass on to the browser. Third, Vroom coordinates server-side pushes and browser-side fetches in a way that maximizes use of the mobile device's CPU.
The researchers will present their findings at the ACM SIGCOMM conference Aug. 24 in a paper titled "Vroom: Accelerating the Mobile Web with Server-Aided Dependency Resolution." The research is funded in part by a Google Faculty Research Award, the National Science Foundation and the MIT Center for Wireless Networks and Mobile Computing.
Explore further: System loads web pages 34 percent faster by fetching files more effectively
Faster Mobile Web Tech Ping!......................
Bloat will just increase as software deals better with bloat.
5G will be out soon. Three to five years it should be every where.
It runs starting at 1 gigabit up to 1000 gigabits.
Right now the average 4G is about 100 megabits. Although by this time next year it should be up to about 200 megabits.
Old news...In 1948 had this in my first 1936 Ford using dual straight pipes and water injection...
“Bloat will just increase as software deals better with bloat.”
LOL!
Finnegan’s first law of unintended consequences.
We can add a second law.
The average time to load a web page will remain constant regardless of advances in network or computer speed and will be equal to the time that the average user can tolerate.
I have watched the evolution of the personal computer and the smart phone and it is absolutely impressive. I grew up during the pre-IBM PC age and I would be dating myself if I told you that my first computer program was written on punch cards.
Not certain how much better these gadgets can get since they do pretty much everything I need them to do. Faster? Okay but wifi seems to handle my needs decently well and so I don't have to use the telephone network that much.
Besides, you are limited to the size of the screen and having higher quality video is not noticeable. There is little benefit to playing hd video on a smart phone.
Whats next?
May 12, 2016: Inventor of the cell phone says this is the next big thing
http://money.cnn.com/2016/05/09/technology/marty-cooper-cell-phone-energous/index.html
BITCoin: Believe the Hype: Here’s the Actual Next Big Thing in Tech
http://fortune.com/2017/08/22/blockchain-next-big-thing-tech/
Wall Street Thinks Netflix Is The Next Big Thing
One trap that I fall into is “why would anyone need that.” Even though the need might not exist, it may in the future.
BTW, I remember the hype around the Segway and it wasn't that popular. Probably mostly a marketing ploy to drive interest.
I can now get those annoying floating ads and videos quicker!
Thomas Edison, during his quest for the electric lightbulb, ‘discovered’ a phenomena of heated elements in a vacuum that caused a cloud of electrons to be emitted and if a positive charged piece of metal was placed near it would cause a current to flow. This became known as the ‘Edison Effect’. He did not see any use for it at the time, and so forgot about it in the course of his experiments.
This ‘effect’ eventually became the basis for what would become Vacuum Tubes or Radio Tubes..........................
Not really. The speed will double, so they will double the number of floating ads, so they will take just as long..........
Edison was an interesting engineer/scientist — he applied little science to his experiments and was brute force — try thousands of possibilities and hope that one works.
Tesla’s observation was that if Edison had spent a little thought and design time on his experiments, he would have been more successful. Tesla worked for Edison for a short bit redesigning and optimizing Edison’s designs.
Still, hard work and determination pays off.
The later battle between the two is interesting too and almost humorous except that animals met horrible deaths by electrocution to prove that AC power was evil.
Agreed. There is sure a lot of crap when we load a web page anymore. Especially those videos that automatically run — that has to waste bandwidth.
Redlands was a brilliant mind. I’ve read a lot of our wireless tech was spawned by him.
Tesla. I don’t know how autocorrect came up with Redlands.
Wireless is one of those all-time top ten inventions in my opinion.
Incredible that you can extend the reach of your network without a physical connection and it is secure and reliable and reasonably fast. Plus it can be done successfully with other wireless sources within the vicinity.
Impressive!!!!
Still in the end he won the radio communications battle with Marconi who still gets the credit.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.