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Facebook has settled on a networking protocol for speeding up web content delivery. In a W3 mailing list post titled "HTTP2 Expression of Interest," Facebook engineer Doug Beaver outlined why the company has started implementing the SPDY protocol, which is not an acronym but just a short version for the word "speedy," and why it is not interested in HTTP Speed+Mobility or Network-Friendly HTTP Upgrade.

"We at Facebook are enthusiastic about the potential for an HTTP/2.0 standard that will deliver enhanced speed and safety for Web users," Beaver writes. "Of … Read more

PARIS--Engineers have begun taking the first big steps in overhauling Hypertext Transfer Protocol, a seminal standard at the most foundational level of the Web.

At a meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) here yesterday, the working group overseeing HTTP formally opened a dicussion about how to make the technology faster. That discussion included presentations about four specific proposals for HTTP 2.0, including SPDY, developed at Google and already used in the real world, and HTTP Speed+Mobility, developed at Microsoft and revealed Wednesday.

There are some differences in the HTTP 2.0 proposals that have emerged so … Read more

Apparently Microsoft isn't content leaving one potentially important speed boost for the Web to Google.

The company last night announced a plan to improve HTTP -- the Hypertext Transfer Protocol that browsers use to request Web pages and servers use to deliver them -- with a technology it calls HTTP Speed+Mobility. Google has proposed an idea called SPDY for speeding up HTTP and won an important ally at IETF, the group that oversees the standard and that's beginning work on a new HTTP 2.0.

But Microsoft wants a piece of the action, too. It thinks SPDY … Read more

Nginx, a Russian startup that has succeeded where others have failed at challenging the dominant Apache software for housing Web sites, has begun trying to convert its popularity into actual money.

Nginx (pronounced "engine X") yesterday unveiled corporate support offerings for the product, a traditional business model for open-source software. It offers three grades--Essential, Advanced, and Premium--with three- and twelve-month contracts for services including installation, configuration, performance tuning, and maintenance.

"Subscribers to the Advanced and Premium options receive design, implementation and optimization assistance, as well as prioritized development. Premium subscribers will have access to an additional set … Read more

Has a slow Web been getting you down lately?

Just imagine if your multibillion-dollar business depended on it, as Google's does. Then imagine the glee in Google's corridors at a significant new victory in the company's attempt to build a Web-accelerating technology it calls SPDY into the Internet.

Earlier today, Mark Nottingham, chairman of the HTTPbis Working Group, announced support for SPDY in an overhaul of one of the networking foundations of the World Wide Web. That foundation is HTTP, the Hypertext Transfer Protocol, and Google hopes SPDY will open up some of its bottlenecks.

The HTTPbis … Read more

SPDY, a would-be standard with which Google hopes to speed up the Web, has taken a baby step outside its founding company's walls.

Strangeloop Networks, a Vancouver company that sells technology and services for hosting content on the Web, now includes SPDY in its products, the company announced yesterday.

SPDY is basically a new and improved HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol), the standard that Web browsers and Web servers use to communicate. To develop and test such a technology, a company needs to control both ends of a communication channel, and that's just what Google has done. Google's … Read more

Web-page speed guru Steve Souders, putting to use the latest in a string of useful tools he's created, has found that the top 17,000 Web sites have eased off use of Adobe Systems' Flash Player in the last half year.

Specifically, Souders has started showing data collected by his HTTP Archive project, which logs a wide range of statistics about a collection of 17,000 top Web sites. He began logging data last year but only announced the HTTP Archive at the end of March.

The site lets people compare statistics about how Web sites are built from … Read more

Twitter has tweaked its security settings to offer an option to always enable Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure, or HTTPS.

Although the more secure setting has always been available, in the past Twitter users had to browse specifically to https://twitter.com to take advantage of it. Now, the tighter security is a new option found in the Twitter settings page.

Clicking on your account name in Twitter and then selecting Settings brings up the appropriate page. From there, you'll see the new option at the bottom of the page. Checking "always use https" ensures that each Twitter … Read more

Sen. Charles Schumer wants online companies to switch to a more secure protocol to better protect consumers who access Web sites via public Wi-Fi hot spots.

The New York Democrat yesterday issued a call to such companies as Amazon and Twitter to switch their default pages to HTTPS from HTTP to help prevent cybercriminals from stealing online passwords and credit card numbers over public Wi-Fi networks. In his request, Schumer said that programs such as Firesheep allow even hackers with no programming skills to easily capture usernames, passwords, browsing history, and other private information from unsuspecting users in spots with … Read more