Strangeloop contributes to new book from O'Reilly

Consider it a conference in a book. The newly released Web Performance Daybook, Volume Two gathers tips, techniques and advice from 32 of the world's leading web performance experts, including Patrick Meenan, Nicole Sullivan, Estelle Weyl, and Steve Souders.

Strangeloop president Joshua Bixby contributed chapter 24, titled "Why You're Probably Reading Your Performance Measurement Results Wrong (But At Least You’re in Good Company)". The chapter offers valuable advice on how to (and how not to) properly interpret the often complicated data generated by web performance testing.

Performance is critical to the success of any website, and the insight of these industry leaders will help site owners squeeze every ounce of performance from their pages.

Web Performance Daybook, Volume Two is available in print ($19.99) and as an ebook ($15.99) from O'Reilly. 

Strangeloop launches Network Accelerator, the first end-to-end optimization solution for global network providers

Today we are extremely excited to announce the launch of our latest web performance optimization product: the Strangeloop Network Accelerator.

Our Network Accelerator is the world’s first product to offer global network providers end-to-end acceleration capabilities. The product is designed to help networks manage burgeoning global internet traffic, facilitate the ever-increasing complexity of pages, and accommodate the increasing share of wireless mobile devices hampered by network and bandwidth limitations. 

Network Accelerator is designed to help telecommunications providers become next-generation content delivery networks by leveraging their existing content delivery network (CDN) infrastructure to provide end-to-end acceleration. The product layers three acceleration elements on top of the existing CDN:

• Near-Client Edge Acceleration powered by our proprietary LightSpeed edge platform,
• Middle-Mile Acceleration powered by our innovative dynamic site acceleration (DSA) technology, and
• Near-Server Edge Acceleration powered by our award-winning front-end optimization (FEO) platform.  

The result is a product that delivers content at least 30% faster than competing solutions – allowing network operators to offer their customers the fastest, most cost-effective CDN on the market. 

What makes Network Accelerator different?

We give network providers end-to-end control of content delivery, allowing them to enhance value to customers by delivering superior performance. Networks have traditionally abdicated responsibility for content delivery to third-party services – often at prohibitive costs to end users. Chris Wilson, SVP Product Strategy & Management at Pacnet, notes that “Adding network acceleration technology can make our already-fast network even faster, while still allowing us to retain complete control.” 

Visit Strangeloop’s official Network Accelerator page for feature descriptions, product specifications, and the latest testing results. 

Learn more:

• Watch a 4-minute video explainer.
• Read the Strangeloop End-to-End Optimization whitepaper.

The 90-Minute Mobile Optimization Life Cycle [SLIDES]

The 'cycle' continues.

Two years ago at Velocity 2010, Strangeloop VP of Technology Hooman Beheshti impressed attendees with a session entitled The 90-Minute Optimization Life Cycle.

During the session, Hooman took an average website and subjected it to automated optimization, allowing audience members to watch in real-time as the acceleration benefits took effect. Attendees raved about the session, rating it as one of the top 10 presentations of the conference.

At this year's Velocity, Hooman was back once again, this time to demonstrate – in real-time – the impact of advanced mobile optimization techniques on an average website.

Attendees witnessed the mobile optimization life cycle from ‘meiosis’ through full bloom, including:

• The initial "Before" shot: Choosing a test site and benchmarking its current performance, focusing on load time, start render time and round trips.
• Repeating core best practices including Keep-Alive, Compression, Far Future Expiry, and Use a CDN.
• Applying a set of automated mobile-specific FEO techniques.
• The "Aftermath": Analyzing results using different browsers.

For those who were unable to attend the session, the full presentation is available in the slideshow below.

Strangeloop to announce groundbreaking new product at Velocity 2012

It’s Christmastime once again for performance geeks, as the industry’s best and brightest are set to gather for Velocity 2012 on June 25-27, 2012, at the Santa Clara Convention Center.

For the fourth straight year, Strangeloop Networks will be represented in the main exhibit hall, sitting on discussion panels, and making presentations. Our official Velocity 2012 page has full details on the event.  

Our panel experts and presenters include: 

Joshua Bixby, president, will be sitting on the panel Got Performance Anxiety? Using Website Performance Tools to Test, Optimize, and Improve Load. Joshua will discuss instances in which negative website experiences have had detrimental effects on performance -- a must-see for those who rely on commercial performance tools.
When: Tuesday, June 26 at 3:50pm.

Hooman Beheshti, VP of Technology, will be presenting a tutorial entitled The 90-Minute Mobile Optimization Life Cycle. The presentation will show the impact of applying mobile-specific FEO treatments on a real site in real time.
When: Monday, June 25 at 3:45pm.

As always, the Strangeloop team will be in the main exhibit hall to share insight and meet attendees. Our VP of Operations Lee Purvis, Director of Western Sales Brett Cohen, and Sales Engineer Cody Harris will all be on-hand at booth #207 to talk FEO tips, tools, and trends. 

In addition to the presentations and discussions, Strangeloop will be announcing a groundbreaking new product. Stay tuned! 

Do web users waste two days a year waiting for slow websites?

How much is 9 minutes per day? It’s one hour a week, two days a year, or 0.625% of your life. It’s also the average amount of time respondents to a recent survey of more than 1,500 web users feel they spend waiting for slow websites to load. 

It may not be true, but in web performance, perception is reality. The research – performed by UK company 1&1 Internet – found that users are less than pleased about their online experience:

They’re annoyed…

• 71% feel regularly inconvenienced by slow websites
• Almost one-third report that their performance-related stress or anger has increased over the past five years.

They’re gloomy…

• 50% believe websites have either not improved in speed or have become slower over the past five years.
• 78% felt some kind of negative emotion due to slow or unreliable websites. 27% of men and 34% of women report feeling stress or anger.

They’re skeptical…

• 44% of users say that slow online transactions make them unsure about the success of the transaction.
• Only one out of four believe websites are getting faster each year.

And they’re not gonna take it...

• 42% of men and 35% of women have decided not to use a company again as a result of experiencing a slow website.
• Over the past five years, 37% of web users believe they’ve become more savvy as to how a website should perform.

The findings provide an interesting contrast to the usual pinpoint analytics utilized by those in the web performance optimization industry, and another stern reminder that web users perceive pages to be 15% slower than they actually are, and later remember them being even slower.

Web Performance Digest: May 2012

Every month, we update our Web Performance Hub with the latest and greatest articles, posts, and presentations from around the web performance community.  

This month's Web Performance Digest features 13 new links. Read all about the latest from Facebook, which dominated recent headlines both for their eventful IPO, their rumoured browser purchase, and their infamous outage. Elsewhere, find out who recognized Strangeloop as one of 100 Brilliant Companies!

Other links include:

The 3 white lies behind Instagram's lightning speed
The "secret sauce" behind Instagram's stellar user experience is rooted in a combination of coding tricks aimed at giving users a feeling of constant responsiveness. Find out how their site "always pretends to work."

The average web page is now 1 MB
Showing 8% growth in just four months, the average size of a webpage is now 1042 kilobytes (KB) as of May 1, 2012. At current growth rates, how long until the average page hits 2 MB?

Who is the fastest online payment processor?
Think PayPal is the fastest online payment processor? Think again. Data pulled by New Relic from 20,000 enterprise customers has revealed a few surprises on the performance of major payment platforms.

How to regain control of rogue third-party content
Why are some companies willing to rack up hefty CDN tabs only to have the gains nullified by slow-loading third-party scripts? Site Optimizer solves this problem by allowing site owners to control how, when and if third-party scripts are permitted to load.

Web performance can be beautiful too
After performing poorly in a 2011 web performance comparison of leading retailers, Crate and Barrel made WPO a priority moving forward. Find out just how "beautiful" their performance has been in 2012!

Check out the rest of the Hub and see hundreds more links to the best selection of performance-related resources on the web. (Have we missed something? Send us your link recommendations!)