No one wants to wait around for a Web page that loads slowly,
or fails to load completely. If your site does not respond
quickly, you are likely to lose visitors to more responsive
sites. Performance is key to the success of a site.

There are many factors that influence performance on the World
Wide Web, but due to the cooperative nature of the Internet, most
of them are not in any single entity’s control. You can,
however, stack the deck in your favor by designing your pages
carefully, and by choosing your Web presence provider wisely.
Here is how to ensure that your pages have the best chance of
loading quickly on a consistent basis:

The Client Side

There are two halves to the performance equation: the client
side and the server side. The client side consists of the end
user’s computer, modem, Web browser and connection to the
Internet. You can’t influence the quality and speed of the
user’s Internet connection, but you can lower the time that
it takes for your pages to load. Spend a little time thinking
about your page layout, and ask these questions:

How many simultaneous colors are you using?

Reduce the number of colors as much as possible. 24 bit color
(~65,000 simultaneous colors) looks great, but will cause
your images to be much larger than if you dither your
graphics down to 8 bits of color (256 simultaneous colors) or
less.

Are you using the most efficient format for each image?

JPEG is typically good for photographs and other images,
while GIF is well suited to less complex images like logos
and line art. Determine which format produces the smallest
file size for each image on your page.

Are you using graphics where text would suffice?

Consider varying the size and color of text using HTML tags
instead of creating your copy with graphics.

Do you need so many images?

People often create pages with many unnecessary images. This
can result in a "busy" look, which makes it hard to
read. Just as importantly, it greatly increases the time it
takes to load the page. Evaluate each image based on its
contribution ("How important is this image?") vs.
its cost ("How large is this image?").

The Server Side

The server side consists of the hardware, software and
Internet connection of the machine serving your site. You can
exercise a great deal of control over this aspect of
performance–by choosing a good Web presence provider. It is
important to consider many points when evaluating a Web hosting
service.

The speed of their Internet connection. The size of the
average Web page continues to increase. Large graphics and
multimedia files can quickly saturate an Internet link, so it is
very important that your provider have a sufficiently large pipe
to the net. The minimum size connection to consider would be a T1
line (1.544 Mb/s), but this does not give your provider much room
to grow. Keep in mind that it’s not just your site that is
being hosted, but many others as well. It is not difficult for a
single "popular" site to overwhelm the capabilities of
a T1. Depending on the provider’s size, a better choice
would be to find one with a T3 line (44.736 Mb/s). This will
ensure that they will not be running out of bandwidth at peak
traffic times.

The underlying transport of the connection. Setting up
an Internet link can be a very expensive proposition. Web
presence providers often cut corners and use an inexpensive frame
relay network, or other public type of network, for their
"local-loop". This means that your data is sharing
communications lines with many other users before it ever
gets to the Internet. It is not unlikely to experience packet
loss due to this type of connection. Make sure that your provider
is connected to the net via a dedicated circuit for their local
loop.

Number of hops to the backbone. Traffic on the Internet
consists of packets being transmitted from one router to the next
before eventually reaching its destination. It is not unusual for
a packet to be handled by 20 or more routers before it ends up
where it is destined. Each hand-off from one router to another is
called a "hop" and it has a performance cost. To reduce
the number of hops choose a provider that is as close as possible
to the backbone (the highest bandwidth routes that carry most of
the Internet’s traffic). Providers directly connected (1
hop) to the backbone typically outperform those who are connected
further down stream (multiple hops). Be sure to ask exactly how
many hops away from the backbone your provider is connected. You
could also determine this yourself by using a
"traceroute" program.

The speed and size of their Web servers. What type of
hardware is your site being served from? The more CPU power
dedicated to handling server requests, the better. High end
servers running UNIX are usually the performance leaders. For
instance, Netscape Communications Corporation uses Silicon
Graphics servers running IRIX (a version of UNIX) to host their
own Web sites. This configuration is extremely stable, and
reliably handles millions of hits a day while maintaining high
performance.

Multiple diverse connections. Internet traffic can take
many different paths to reach a given destination. Some paths are
faster or more direct than others. Having multiple, diverse
connections to the Internet, and running full BGP4 (define
this BGP stands for Border Gateway Protocol. It is the
language that Internet routers speak to one another to
communicate routing information.) routing over these connections,
means your data has more paths to choose from, and better odds of
finding a faster route. Another benefit of having multiple
diverse connections is that your packets can have a better chance
of bypassing backbone "peering points". Peering points
are where traffic from the large backbone providers get
transferred from one network to another. Like an interchange
between large interstate highways, traffic often slows to a
crawl. A big problem with the Internet today is the saturation of
these peering points. If your data has more choices and can avoid
these points, it will arrive more quickly and more reliably.

Summary

The performance equation has two halves: the client side and
the server side. While most of the client side is out of your
control, you can influence client side performance through
careful design of your pages. The server side is very much under
your control: choose a Web presence provider that is connected
close to the backbone, uses high performance servers, and has
multiple, high-speed connections to the Internet. It can mean the
difference between having a fast, popular site and a slow,
frustrating one.

Updated: 10/03/98