cloud performance: guide to tackling cloud latency [cloud connect - chicago 2012]

Web Acceleration and Front End Optimization

Cloud Connect 2012 Chicago

Hooman Beheshti VP Technology, Strangeloop

[email protected]

© 2010 Strangeloop Networks Strangeloop. Faster Websites. Automatically. 2

Web Application Acceleration

•  Means lots of things to lots of people –  TCP optimization

–  Caching –  HTTP protocol optimization

–  Compression –  Etc

•  We’ll focus on “front-end” issues –  Front-end Optimization (FEO) –  Sometimes called WCO or WPO


Better Performance = Better Business


Impact of page load time on average daily searches per user

-0.70%

-0.60%

-0.50%

-0.40%

-0.30%

-0.20%

-0.10%

0.00%

50ms pre-header

100ms pre-header

200ms post-header

200ms post-ads

400ms post-header


Impact of additional delay on business metrics

-5.00% -4.50% -4.00% -3.50% -3.00% -2.50% -2.00% -1.50% -1.00% -0.50% 0.00%

50 200 500 1000 2000

Perc

ent c

hang

e

Added delay

Queries per visitor Query refinement Revenue per visitor Any clicks Satisfaction


Shopzilla had another angle

� Big, high-traffic site ◦ 100M impressions a day ◦ 8,000 searches a

second ◦ 20-29M unique visitors

a month ◦ 100M products

�  16 month re-engineering ◦  Page load from 6 seconds

to 1.2 ◦  Uptime from 99.65% to

99.97% ◦  10% of previous hardware

needs

http://en.oreilly.com/velocity2009/public/schedule/detail/7709


5-12% increase in revenue


Mobile Case Study


Customer Pro"le

•  Top 200 Internet retailer, US based •  Target geography: US and Europe •  $3B in revenue

•  30,000 employees


Page Views by Mobile Device


Experiment

•  Induce delay on HTML –  200msec, 500msec, 1000msec

•  Apply to small percentage of tra#c

•  12 weeks

•  Monitor impact on key business metrics


Results


Impact on Bounce Rate


Impact on Returning Visitors


More Details

•  http://www.webperformancetoday.com/2011/11/23/case-study-slow-page-load-mobile-business-metrics/

•  http://velocityconf.com/velocityeu/public/schedule/detail/21632


What Is FEO?


What Is FEO?

0 6 12


What Is FEO?

0 6 12

DNS TTFB

TCP Connection

Download


What Is FEO?

0 6 12

Back End: The time from when the request is made by the browser to last byte of the HTML response

Front End: Everything after the HTML arrives

Important Timers: Start Render

onload (Document Complete)


Google’s Waterfall Chart


Measurement/Tools


Waterfall Analysis

•  Best way to address front-end problems is to diagnose your site/application through waterfall analysis


Waterfall Tools: webpagetest.org


Waterfall Tools: HTTPWatch


Waterfall Tools: Firebug


Waterfall Tools: WebKit Dev Tools


Waterfall Tools: PCAP2HAR


Measurement

•  Performance measurement is still a challenge •  Synthetic performance “proxies”

–  Backbone testing services –  Desktop tools and browser plugins –  Browser-based tests

•  Real User Monitoring (RUM) –  Using real user beacons –  Services available –  Can build your own –  Now a part of Google Analytics –  Caveat: need lots of data!


Front End Problems


Front End Performance Problems



•  Latency: –  every round trip incurs a latency

penalty




penalty

•  Payload:

–  last mile bandwidth isn’t in"nite




penalty

•  Payload:


•  Caching: –  coming back to the page must be

much faster




penalty

•  Payload:


•  Caching: –  coming back to the page must be

much faster

•  Rendering: –  browser work takes time


Client Platforms

•  Desktop vs Mobile –  Desktop browsers have more access to compute

resources –  Larger screens

–  Faster networks (lower latency)

•  The problems are often similar –  Addressing them is often di$erent


Addressing Front End Problems


Latency

•  TTFB (Time To First Byte) •  Every fetch incurs the latency penalty •  Two ways to address the problem:

–  Reduce latency –  Get rid of round trips


CDN

•  Global network of caching proxies that gets content closer to all your users

•  The closer the asset, the lower the latency

•  Lots of vendors to choose from


CDN

Per object TTFB savings of ~50%


CDN: because physics!!

•  Well understood way to leverage science

•  Mitigates the latency problem by reducing it for the majority of your users

•  Less e$ective when it comes to mobile users


Mobile Networks (3G example)


Resource Consolidation

•  Eliminating round trips altogether also "ghts the latency problem, often more e$ectively

Combine images into fewer "packages"


Resource Consolidation

•  A number of consolidation techniques –  Images (sprites)

–  JavaScript/CSS consolidation/concatenation –  Inlining (DataURI for images)

–  MHTML (IE only)

•  Browser makes one request for the “package”

•  HTML is marked up so the browser can get individual resources from inside the package


Payload Reduction

•  Bytes still need to get from server (cloud or otherwise) to client

•  Ways to reduce bytes: –  HTTP compression

–  JS/CSS mini"cation –  Image compression (lossless or lossy)


Payload Reduction

•  Any reduction in bytes will make pages load faster

•  This is particularly important with mobile clients


Browser Caching

•  The browser cache is a resource seldom used optimally

•  Reasons why we generally don’t do good browser caching –  Caching rules are often complicated

–  We never want to server stale content


Browser Caching

•  Use long expiry on static objects –  Served from origin

–  Served from CDN

•  Invalidation framework is a must –  Protect against serving stale content

–  Example: versioning

/images/image.jpg à /images/image.jpg?v=00001


Browser Caching on Mobile Platforms

•  Di$erent than desktop

•  The cache available to the browsers is relatively small

•  Use localStorage instead of browser cache –  A programmable cache, unlike HTTP object caches

–  Limited size (~2.5MB per domain) –  Good for caching CSS/JS, and small images


Rendering Issues

•  More complicated

•  The order of events in the browser make a di$erence to how fast a page looks –  Put things in the optimal order for rendering

•  Deferral –  CSS and JS (sometimes images) –  Asynchronous JavaScript

•  Above the fold vs below the fold


Some Examples


Before and After Waterfalls

58 roundtrips à 5 roundtrips

4.2 seconds à 1.1 seconds

57 roundtrips à 4 roundtrips

3.2 seconds à 0.7 seconds

First Time Visitor

Repeat Visitor

Before FEO After FEO


Mobile Example

•  Velocity Conference 2012

•  Step-wise acceleration of O’reilly’s site (for a mobile phone on 3G) –  Start with the original site (purposely made worse)

–  Add CDN –  Add resource consolidation and payload reduction

–  Add deferrals

•  Examine impact of each


What Does it Look Like?

http://youtu.be/iPtbU1KvLjM


Original Site + CDN

15.29 sec 13.7 sec


Add Consolidation and Payload Reduction

13.7 sec

9.47 sec

To onload Before After

# of resources 92 28

KBytes 727 417


Add Deferral


Add Deferral

9.47 sec

3.6 sec

5.56 sec

2.2 sec


What Does It Look Like?

MobileFEO = +Consolidation and payload reduction MobileFEO2 = +Deferrals

http://youtu.be/zTTxdAtbhsg


Summing up…


Sounds Really Easy!

•  It’s not!

•  Some techniques are just di#cult to implement

•  Optimizing for performance sometimes requires signi"cant dev resources –  Mortal companies can’t a$ord to sacri"ce new

feature cycles

•  Maintenance and upkeep is a constant problem –  Every version to roll out will need optimization


FEO Automation Industry

•  Solutions available to automatically do this stu$

•  Multiple deployment options –  Software/Hardware/Service

–  Cloud apps will use either service or software

•  The goal is to “"x the code” for performance, automatically


It Gets Complicated

•  Rewriting HTML can break pages

•  You have to do this stu$ based on browser –  Play to the strength of each browser (supported

techniques, etc) –  Stay away from their weaknesses (bugs, undocumented

issues, etc) –  Mobile is its own beast

•  Optimizing once per page isn’t enough –  First view (cold cache) –  Repeat view (warm cache) –  User "ow


When Looking For FEO Automation

•  Do your research, and understand your needs

•  Understand the deployment model and how disruptive it will be to you, if at all

•  Are there provisions in place for breaking pages

•  Granularity in functionality: –  Browser-based optimization –  mobile –  "rst/repeat views –  transaction %ows

•  Choose what’s right for you, based on your needs

Thank You

68

[email protected]

cloud performance: guide to tackling cloud latency [cloud connect - chicago 2012]

Technology

strangeloop networks

waterfall tools

waterfall chart

end performance problems

ms pre

impact of page load

businessmetrics http

webkit dev tools