Re Faster HTTP
Robert Denny (rdenny@netcom.com)
Thu, 7 Jul 1994 17:48:24 +0200
> At 08:48 PM 7/6/94 +0200, Mary Morris wrote:
> >
> >One observation that I have made is that http
> >doesn't gracefully share slow ie 14.4k lines.
> >If I am loading a large item (picture, tarfile
> >or anything 30k or more) and I start receiving
> >an email the http download will pause. After the
> > [...etc]
>
> HTTP is just another TCP connection. How can your networking software
> which round robins the connections tell the difference between this and
> an FTP data connection ?
>
> I use serial networking to a Windows PC and do not see the problem you
> mentioned above. Perhaps it is related to your flavor of networking
> software ?
My guess is she is using WinMosaic on a machine with less than 16MB of RAM.
The pauses are common if the client (Win) machine has, say, 8MB of RAM, and
is receiving a moderately complex document of 30KB or more in length.
On my 386 notebook with 8MB, receiving the WinMosaic "What's New" page
(>100K in length), using PPP, I watch the modem lites, and see that it is
the client that is taking a LONG time to send ACKs. Like 30 sec. after
receiving 60K or so. The entire process takes 10-15 minutes! Meanwhile, the
disk is thrashing to beat hell from the pagefaulting.
Mac Mosaic and MacWeb were never like this!
-- Bob