On 11/09/2015 1:49 p.m., Roland Dobbins wrote:

On 11 Sep 2015, at 8:14, Scott Weeks wrote:

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For example, send me everything but the flash and images.

This is a preference setting on most Web browsers. Lynx works well for this, too, on *NIX systems, if the users can use a terminal.

Equivalent for email clients - headers-only, only download message on demand, only download attachments on demand, etc.

My first thought on seeing the post was the work I used to do for satellite-linked networks around TCP config optimisation. This was on XP clients so i've no idea how aplicable it is to more modern desktops, but the simple way was to make use of tools such as TCP Optimizer[1]. Also had a lot of success with WAFS type devices such as the Riverbed Steelhead and their ilk, which goes a bit beyond OP's scope, in terms of making low-bandwidth high-latency links more optimal. Cheers Mark. [1] http://www.speedguide.net/downloads.php and http://www.speedguide.net/articles.php?category=99 which I note talks about Windows 7,8,10 and 2012 server, so this must still be a 'thing'.

Matt’s totally correct on the browser requesting the info, so it’s up to the client to decide what to download even obfuscated javascript links. My question would be how far can compression take you for something like Opera which does some compression in browser with a caching server? I figure a lot of websites are probably using more uncompressed formats like PNG, which can probably be compressed a bit more, but it’s still like taking a tar ball. If a server in sending gzip’d text and the browser/cache are compressing that how much more can be gained? Compression of compression with even more compression to me is probably more like a downward spiral.

On Sep 10, 2015, at 10:54 PM, Matthew Petach <mpetach@netflight.com> wrote:

On Thu, Sep 10, 2015 at 6:14 PM, Scott Weeks <surfer@mauigateway.com> wrote:

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Someone told me that there is a way for the browser to say to the web server, send me only the parts of the web page I request. For example, send me everything but the flash and images. Being a browser wuss I thought the web server just sent everything and the browser decided whether to display it or not. That would mean the data already was transferred over the expensive sat link incurring the data costs.

scott

Just wanted to clear one point up...

The web is *not* a "push" model; it's a "pull" model.

The HTML document is nothing but a text document which has references to other elements that are available to the browser, should it choose to request them; but it is incumbent upon the browser to request each and every one of those other elements from the server before they are transferred. The server will not send something that was not first requested by the browser.

It's misunderstandings like this that make content providers twitch every time an eyeball network says "well you're *sending* all this data at my network" -- absolutely nothing is being sent that was not explicitly requested by the browser first. ^_^;

Thanks!

Matt