Performance analysis of New Zealand websites using HTTP header values

Abstract

The simplest way to maximize the use of the available broadband capacity is to compress data transfers and cache data whenever possible. The HTTP protocol allows both compression and caching, benefiting both servers (in terms of bandwidth requirements and lighter load) and clients (in terms of faster downloads). In this paper, we investigate some of the top-ranking websites within New Zealand to see how well they are setup for network performance. We find a surprisingly large number of sites that are not well-setup to cater for compression and caching. We see that simple tuning of these servers to take advantage of compression and caching will enable better use of the network bandwidth. Though this study is limited to New Zealand, similar analysis could be made of other servers irrespective of their location.