HTTP Requests

How many is too much?

[pageoneresults]

While performing various site reviews and inspecting headers, load times, etc. I'm finding a number of sites where there may be 200 to 300+ HTTP Requests to the server on each page visit. I mean, 100 of them could be image requests, another 10 external file references, yada, yada.

At what point does "too many" come into play? You have the server(s) to consider and then you also have the visitors. Do you think the majority of visitors/devices can handle that many HTTP Requests jumping between pages? Is performance no longer a concern? Even with HTTP Compression, are 300 requests to the server on a single page visit okay?

[lammert]

Even with HTTP Compression, are 300 requests to the server on a single page visit okay?

IMO, no. Even on a broadband connection 300 single requests are noticable and can take several seconds to complete if the visitor is on a distant location (cross USA about 80 msec latency, USA-Europe 150 msec). A dialup connection will be even worse. about 50% of the time I am using a dialup connection at 160 msec from my webserver and the average of 10 requests needed for my sites can take too much time.

Often 300 requests are the result of lousy programming. Look at the page and see how it is built up. Combine smaller images in one large and use image maps for menu's or tricks to display parts of larger images in a background. Multiple JS scripts may be combined in one larger one that only takes one request.

And most important of all, use proper cache parameters for all page items. Images, javascript files etc, do not need to be reloaded on every new pageview. Proper cache parameters won't increase load time for the first page visit, but may decrease the number of HTTP requests on successive page views.

Besides the load time for a single user, 300 HTTP requests per pageview also limits the number of concurrent users to your site.

[pageoneresults]

Thanks lammert, glad you found this topic. :)

300 HTTP requests per pageview also limits the number of concurrent users to your site.

Recently Target lost its case in a Class Action pertaining to Accessibility and Usability...

Judge Certifies Class Action Lawsuit against Target Website
[webmasterworld.com...]

During that topic discussion, I of course had to check in on Target and see what their pages were doing. Here are the stats for the Target.com home page...

Objects Qty Size* 
HTML 2 196,802 
CSS 3 20,273 
Scripts 8 43,145 
Images 38 354,877 
CSS Images 164 322,228 
Other 6 0 
Total 221 937,325

Just over 900k of information loading. 221 http requests, many being load balanced. But still, there are 164 images loading through CSS calls alone.

I'm just trying to figure out why all the big name sites are on this mission to stuff whatever they can on a single page. I land on sites and watch my status bar and see 100+ images loading and think to myself, what the heck is all that? You know what it is? It's all that table stuff that has been moved to external CSS. No real changes in design mentality, just a change in where all the bloat is. :)

I'll assume that bandwidth doesn't concern many of these sites?

[blend27]

Graphic Design Department has a senior Designer that is stuck on "best quality imaginary".

been there, "corps" are stubborn..

[phranque]

I land on sites and watch my status bar...

how (with which tool) do you view these stats?