Companion slides for a webinar on Web performance: http://streamingmedia.com/webevents/details.asp?eventid=223 A World of Content on Every Web Site: Solving the Performance Challenges of Media, Entertainment, and Portal Sites For the average Internet user, a Web site is a single destination that delivers information or entertainment in various forms — video streams, photos, localized weather, feature stories. Providing a rich Web site experience today involves using content and components from 3rd parties such as ads, community forums or even blogs. In addition, Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) host images and video, improving the overall load time of Web pages. But when Web performance issues arise identifying the root cause quickly can be difficult.

1. A world of content
on every web site
Eric Goldsmith
February 18, 2010

2. Anatomy of a Web page
Behind a Web page is a complex array of components
Many individual objects are loaded for each page
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3. Anatomy of a Web page
Source: webpagetest.org
The key to faster pages is measuring and understanding
the component objects
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4. Page construction and delivery impact load time
Your pages could be slowed down by poor construction:
Too many objects
Objects that are too large
Objects loading in non-optimal order
Overly complex scripts
Or poor delivery:
Not using a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
Inadequate content caching
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5. Fix what you control …
These books should be on the shelf of every Web
developer and performance engineer
All the ‘hows’ and ‘whys’ of Web site performance
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6. Fix what you control …
And the use of one or more of these tools should be a
routine part of your development workflow:
Webpagetest – www.webpagetest.org
YSlow – developer.yahoo.com/yslow
PageSpeed – code.google.com/speed/page-speed
KITE – kite.keynote.com
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7. … manage what you don’t
How much of the content of your Web site it not within
your direct control?
Advertising
Partner content
Widgets
Tracking / Analytics
Content Delivery Networks (CDNs)
Hmm, how much of my site is that stuff?
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8. How much content is from 3rd parties?
An informal look at top Web sites revealed that
40 – 90% of page content came from 3rd parties
The more 3rd party content, the more you’re relying on
someone else for your site’s performance
And the more important it is to monitor performance
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9. Performance monitoring
Production Web site performance should be monitored…
At regular intervals
Several times an hour
From various geographic locations
Monitor from where your users are
With sufficient granularity
Enough data points to be statistically significant
Object-level monitoring to help with troubleshooting
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10. Getting a handle on 3rd party performance
What happened?
One issue or two?
My content or 3rd
party?
Who owns resolution?
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11. Getting a handle on 3rd party performance
The traditional troubleshooting approach…
Analysts pour over various charts & metrics
Time consuming and tedious
Something new…
Object domains mapped to categories. For example:
O&O (Owned and Operated)
CDN (3rd-party Content Delivery Networks)
3rdParty (All other content, including ads, etc)
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12. Getting a handle on 3rd party performance
More actionable information:
two separate issues
area of ownership clear(er)
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13. Getting a handle on 3rd party performance
Viewing performance by domain/object category
Data segregation and visualization technique to speed problem
identification and resolution
Available commercially in several tools
For example, Keynote’s Virtual Pages
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14. Tips for managing 3rd party performance
Mitigate impact to your pages
Load 3rd party ads, widgets, modules, etc. asynchronously (i.e.
not blocking page content) to minimize the impact to your page
Monitor performance with external tool(s)
Independent of you or your 3rd party content providers
Give 3rd party content providers access to the data/reports
Ensure a defined support/escalation path
e.g. who to call, hours of support, etc.
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15. Tips for managing 3rd party performance
For Service Level Agreements (SLAs), be sure to define:
How performance is measured
e.g. tool, test frequency, geographic location, data aggregation (mean,
median, percentile), etc.
Define what constitutes a failure
e.g. more than 3 failed tests in any 1 hour period from > 2 locations
Who’s responsible for the cost and staffing of monitoring
Define financial impact of failure to meet SLA
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16. Thank you
Contact info
eric.goldsmith@corp.aol.com
www.ericgoldsmith.com
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