Postings
Speedy Web
With Google incorporating a “website speed” factor into site rankings, it has created renewed interests in rendering performance of web sites/apps. As a techie who has spent most of her career around web app delivery & performance, I’d like to highlight some (known) techniques and offer a few insights.
Browser-Side Optimization
Steve Souder identified 14 rules in his book for optimizing the performance of any given web page:
- Make Fewer HTTP Requests
- Use a Content Delivery Network
- Add an Expires Header
- Gzip Components
- Put Stylesheets at the Top
- Put Scripts at the Bottom
- Avoid CSS Expressions
- Make JavaScript and CSS External
- Reduce DNS Lookups
- Minify JavaScript
- Avoid Redirects
- Remove Duplicates Scripts
- Configure ETags
- Make Ajax Cacheable
These rules are primarily focused on reducing the impact of bandwidth, network latency, and the rendering of html/javascript/css.
Server-Side Optimization
As web applications become more complex and database-driven, a sluggish backend may completely negate any performance gains from client-side optimization. Back in 2003 when I managed the World Health Organization’s website, we employed a CMS tool that published all the content in static html. This allowed us to deliver a large quantity of (frequently updated) content without needing to scale out the CMS to handle millions of requests. (more…)
Filed under: httpd, web X.0 — appgirl @ 10:57 amComments (1)
httpd: accelerate web page performance with mod_expires
More and more goodies are packaged with apache2, allowing one to perform front-end engineering right out of the box. Here are a tip on using mod_expires to maximize the use of browser cache and accelerate performance for repeat visitors. (more…)
Filed under: httpd — appgirl @ 7:45 pmComments (0)
Making the case for a virtualized hardware appliance
As Data Center infrastructures become more virtualized, the desire for virtualized network services increases. We see 2 types of offerings:
- virtual appliances delivered in a VM image, such as the Netscaler VPX from Citrix
- hardware appliances that can be virtualized, such as Cisco ACE or ASA
Comments (0)
Sizing Concurrent Users & Connections in a Web Environment
Calculating concurrent connections for new web applications isn’t an exact science. Fortunately Sun published a guide with an overview of the sizing process that can be applied to most web applications. (more…)
Filed under: httpd, web X.0 — appgirl @ 9:08 pmComments (0)
Google Tech Talk – A look at Web Security
This is a bit dated (April ‘06) but still very much relevant. This video is a tech talk delivered at Google by security expert Mike Andrews. n this TechTalk, Mike Andrews examines how web applications are attacked, walk through a testing framework for evaluating the security of an application and take some deep-dives into a few interesting and common vulnerabilities and how they can be exploited. A good primer for folks interested in Web App Firewalsl.
Filed under: httpd — appgirl @ 9:17 pmComments (0)
About
My name is Catherine Liao and you're reading the latest postings of various blogs I follow. You'll notice that the topics tend to center around Cloud Computing, Data Center, Virtualization, Servers, Web Technologies and 24x7 Operations.
These are topics that I'm interested in as I've spent a large chunk of my professional career building, deploying, and maintaining 24x7 application delivery environments. I use the knowledge I've garnered daily in my role as a Technology Solutions Architect for Cisco. I should note that this site is my personal site and does not reflect the views of Cisco.
Feel free to drop me a note if you find this site useful or if you'd like for me to check out your blog. I can be reached at catherine.liao@gmail.com. You can also connect with me via LinkedIn or Twitter.
Looking for less "geeky" content? Check out my travel blog 1-Day Itinerary.

