Performance automation 101 @LDNWebPerf MickMcGuinness

Performance Automation
faster ways to make your website faster
mick.mcguinness@applicationperformance.com
@AppPerf

Confidential © www.applicationperformance.com Performance is our business!

Topics
Quick recap from last time
Frontend optimization
The optimization techniques
Who is using them? If not why not?
How to apply the techniques faster
Manual coding
.htaccess file
PHP Libraries
CMS plugins
Web Server software/modules
Hardware appliances
SaaS Solutions and Advanced CDNs

What do we mean by Frontend Time?

Definition
Steve Souders “High-Performance Websites”


Why front-end Optimization?

Over 80% of the page load time is spent
outside the data centre!!!
Steve Souders “High-Performance Websites”


The Tools

Yahoo YSlow

Google PageSpeed

Take your pick, the rules are roughly equivalent.


5 Important Ones
1. Reduce Page Size (<500Kb)
2. Enable (Gzip) Compression
3. Reduce the number of roundtrips (<40 per
page…)
4. Structure the page (to improve render &
download)
CSS First
Javascript last
5. Cache, Cache, Cache


Are sites applying the rules?
Percent of sites that got a passing grade for the
basic optimization checks:
Percent of pages with a passing grade
Optimization
(2010)
Keep-alive Enabled 85%
Compress Text 43%
Compress Images 39%
Cache Static Content 15%
Combine JS/CSS 47%
CDN Usage 12%

These aren't the advanced optimizations - they're the most basic. Only
15% of pages are effectively leveraging the browser cache! (and "passing"
is pretty generous here - a score of 80 or better).
http://blog.patrickmeenan.com/

Analysis of FTSE 350

Frontend vs Backend Time


Top 5 and Bottom 5 for FTSE 350

Top 5 Repeat FV Global RV Global
Repeat First View View - Average Average
First View View Size - HTTP HTTP Load Load
URL Size (KB) (KB) Requests Requests YSlow Server Details Time Time
http://www.ccruk.com/ 112 47 15 13 63 Microsoft-IIS/5.0 1.916 7.565
http://www.tesco.com/ 106 13 11 1 71 Microsoft-IIS/6.0 ASP.NET 2.047 0.663
http://www.whsmithplc.co.uk/ 49 3 7 6 82 Microsoft-IIS/6.0 ASP.NET 2.076 1.474
http://www.antofagasta.co.uk/ 73 15 9 8 94 Apache 2.148 1.483
http://www.giml.co.uk/ 90 5 10 9 68 Microsoft-IIS/6.0 ASP.NET 2.525 1.779

Bottom 5 Repeat
Repeat First View View - FV Global RV Global
First View View Size - HTTP HTTP Average Average
URL Size (KB) (KB) Requests Requests YSlow Server Details Load Time Load Time
http://www.renishaw.com/ 1812 55 108 107 65 WS6 53.228 14.912
http://www.eddiestobart.co.uk/ 4125 18 66 62 47 Apache/2.0.52 (CentOS) 47.342 19.218
http://www.rpsgroup.com/ 585 107 25 21 51 Microsoft-IIS/6.0 ASP.NET 36.791 29.976
http://www.vedantaresources.com/ 1010 17 35 33 44 Microsoft-IIS/6.0 ASP.NET 36.361 7.926
http://www.carillionplc.com/ 387 37 50 48 54 Microsoft-IIS/5.0 ASP.NET 32.949 6.652

Full list http://www.aptimize.com/Upload/docs/FTSE.pdf

tesco.com
Second fastest home page in FTSE 350
Rich looking site but only 11 requests and 108K


Why isn’t everyone using the rules?

Possible Reasons
They don’t know about them
They may still be focussing inside the data center
They can be difficult to apply
Let’s take a look at some ways to make it easier


Manual Coding
Pros
Anyone think of any???
Cons
Time consuming.
Developers would rather write new functionality.
Not a one off. Needs to be repeated each time the site
is updated.
Some of the techniques are very difficult to implement
manually.
Difficult to do within most CMS environments
Need to keep up to date with new techniques and
new browsers as they become available.


Manual Coding

Examples
Image optimization
http://www.phpied.com/command-line-css-spriting/
http://www.smushit.com/ysmush.it/
http://csssprites.org/
JS and CSS minification
http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/compressor/
http://www.crockford.com/javascript/jsmin.html


.htaccess
Pros
It’s FREE! (from Sergey Chernyshev)
It is easy to implement
Cons
Apache or NginX only
It won’t do all the optimizations. What it does is:
Compression for text mime-types (mod_deflate)
File versioning for static resources (mod_rewrite)
Far-future cache expiry headers (mod_expires)
Examples
http://www.showslow.com/blog/drop-in-htaccess-is-
now-on-github-go-fork-it/


PHP Libraries
Pros
Free in some cases
Same optimizations as .htaccess technique but in some cases can
also do additional techniques like:
JS/CSS file combination and minification
Cons
PHP and Apache Only
It won’t do all the optimizations.
Examples
http://farhadi.ir/works/smartoptimizer (GPL Open Source)
http://www.webogroup.com/home/site-speedup/ (Free &
Commercial versions)
http://projects.westhost.com/contest/php/function/minify-css-js-
and-cache-output/187 (Free)


CMS Plugins
Pros
FREE in many cases
Cons
Specific to the CMS
They won’t do all the optimizations
Examples
http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/site-management/site-
performance
http://www.liferay.com/ (Built in CSS and JS combination and
minification)
http://wimleers.com/article/improving-drupals-page-loading-
performance (Built in CSS and JS combination and minification)


Acceleration Software/Modules
Pros
Quick to install.
Automatically apply the most optimizations without
code changes or hardware.
Vendors continually develop to add support for new
optimizations and browsers as they come along.
Cons
Beware of conflicts with other modules.
Examples
Aptimize www.aptimize.com (Commercial, any server)
Google mod_pagespeed (Open Source, Apache only)


Aptimize example microsoft.com

Load Time = 4.0 seconds Load Time = 9.1 seconds
Fully Loaded = 6.8 seconds Fully Loaded = 13.2 seconds
Page size = 501 KB Page size = 1251 KB
Requests = 21 Requests = 84
http://www.webpagetest.org/result/110125_CX_1J71/ http://www.webpagetest.org/result/110125_VS_1J72/


Hardware Appliances
Traditional Load balancers have evolved to do additional
tasks (Application Delivery Controllers)
Pros
Offload tasks from the web server such as:
 Gzip compression
 SSL termination
 Caching
Some are starting to do more frontend optimization
techniques too.
Cons
They won’t do all the optimizations
You need to install extra hardware


Hardware Appliances
Examples
F5 Networks
Citrix Netscaler
Zeus
StrangeLoops
ActivNetworks
We are seeing some
convergence between
network layer
acceleration and
application layer
acceleration devices.


SaaS Solutions
Pros
No on site hardware or software needed
Cons
DNS points to the provider so your site availability
outside your control
Examples
http://www.strangeloopnetworks.com/products/site-
optimizer-service/


Next generation CDNs
Global edge caches with the addition of ‘middle
mile acceleration’ which optimizes how data travels
Pros
No on site hardware or software needed
TCP/IP optimization for middle mile
Reduces round-trips
Cons
It won’t do all the optimizations.


Next generation CDNs
Examples
http://www.cotendo.com/services/DSA/
http://www.us.cdnetworks.com/dynamic_web_acceleration


Summary
Many sites are not following the rules for
frontend optimization.
Doing it manually is time consuming
There are several better options to help you do
things quicker and easier.
Evaluate multiple options and benchmark


Questions?


About Me
15yrs IT experience
Started in 1996 as a C/C++ and Oracle developer
Performance Consultant at Precise Software 1998-2003
Founded Application Performance Ltd in 2004-present
e:mick.mcguinness@applicationperformance.com
m:+44 7876 680410
Twitter: http://twitter.com/AppPerf
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/mickmcguinness
Skype: mick_mcguinness


Performance automation 101 @LDNWebPerf MickMcGuinness

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