Google is developing a new application layer protocol designed to speed the movement across the web. It's called SPDY. Yes, that is right say it with me, SPEEDY.

Unveiled Thursday with a post to the Google Research blog, this "early-stage" research project is specifically designed to reduce latency via things like multiplexed streams, request prioritization, and HTTP header compression.

HTTP today is used in a way that it wasn't designed for. According to leading experts, HTTP is very efficient at transferring an individual file. But it wasn't designed to transfer a large number of small files efficiently, and this is exactly what the protocol is called upon to do with today's websites. Pages with 60 or more images, CSS files, and external JavaScript are not unusual for high-profile Web destinations. Loading all those individual files mostly takes time because of all the overhead of separately requesting them and waiting for the TCP sessions HTTP runs over to probe the network capacity and ramp up their transmission speed. Browsers can either send requests to the same server over one session, in which case small files can get stuck behind big ones, or set up parallel HTTP/TCP sessions where each must ramp up from minimum speed individually. With all the extra features and cookies, an HTTP request is often almost a kilobyte in size, and takes precious dozens of milliseconds to transmit.

The company's research arm has already developed a prototype web server and the Chrome client that make use of the protocol. In the lab, Google says it sees "up to" a 55 per cent improvement when downloading the web's top 25 sites over simulated home connections.
"There is still a lot of work we need to do to evaluate the performance of SPDY in real-world conditions. However, we believe that we have reached the stage where our small team could benefit from the active participation, feedback and assistance of the web community," the company says.

Google's documentation explains that SPDY is not a means of replacing http. It will create a session between the HTTP application layer and the TCP transport layer. That said, this session uses an HTTP-like request-response setup.

"SPDY replaces some parts of HTTP, but mostly augments it," reads a Google FAQ. "At the highest level of the application layer, the request-response protocol remains the same. SPDY still uses HTTP methods, headers, and other semantics. But SPDY overrides other parts of the protocol, such as connection management and data transfer formats."

As it rolls out all sorts of web-based applications, Google is intent on juicing web speeds. That's why it launched its very own browser, Chrome, with its very own JavaScript engine, and that's why Chrome will soon drive Google's very own operating system.

All this is very interesting to Web Full Circle because it looks like Google is taking aim at commanding and setting the World Web standard. Wither that is the case it will be interesting to see the increase in speed and the efficient use of the new “Frankenstein HTTP.” But folks have no worries Web Full Circle is on the case.

Thank you ComputerWorld for you’re the specs of the case.