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вторник, 22 ноября 2016 г.

HTTP2 Protocol: How to Deliver Content Faster



In 1990, HTTP was introduces as a method to allow browsers request information from servers where web-sites are hosted. But there is a more advanced option today: HTTP2. It was invented by engineers and IT specialists working in the biggest enterprises. HTTP2 ensures quicker and safer data loading, enhancing users’ security. It may handle the same requests without damaging servers.

HTTP2 Essentials

HTTPS is based on SPDY protocol that connects HTTP and HTTPS protocols, simplifying, tokenizing and compressing requests. They both make browsing faster allowing making several requests at once. What is the difference between HTTP and HTTP2? HTTP2 is a binary protocol that is less prone to errors and more compact. In comparison with HTTP that is textual, HTTP2 is multiplexed, which makes parallel connection possible.

Evolution of HTTP2

Over time, HTTP2 acquired the following improvements:
  • ·     Multiplexing, e.g. ability to same multiple requests over the same TCP connection and get responses out of order.
  • ·         Dependency of stream: user may indicate to the server which resources are in priority.
  • ·         Server push, e.g. sending the resources that have not been requested by the client yet.

Where is it used?

Implementing HTTP2, you don’t have to change applications or websites to ensure their proper work – they will function uninterrupted, consuming fewer resources of client and server. Many global organizations use HTTP2 connection on browsers, benefiting from better security and performance. In the future, many of them plan to replace SPDY totally with HTTP2. 

HTTP2 standard was approved in February 2015, and most browsers already support it. If you are CDN user, you can allow implementing this technology, too. With HTTP2, you will greatly improve page loading speed and user’s experience. The sooner you grasp the possibilities, the more successful your project will be! 

четверг, 17 ноября 2016 г.

7 Tasks to Keep Your Server Up-to-Date

If you have leased a high-quality dedicated server with full management, there are still some things that need be done to ensure its good performance and protection. Here are seven monthly tasks for server maintenance that should turn into your habits.

1. Take backups. When it comes to your data, you should always be proactive. Happily, there are convenient tools for monthly backups, such as cPanel. To activate it, open your Web Hosting Manager account, select “Backup Configuration” and enable “Backup Status” settings.
In your account, you may always specify the settings and select between daily, weekly, or monthly backup, or even combine these options. It is highly recommended to save backups on some destination different from the local one. It will save you in case of hardware failure, data stealing and other errors.
WHM has various “Scheduling and Retention” settings that let you specify when the backup process runs. Choose between daily, weekly, or monthly backups, or a combination of the three settings. Your system then creates a backup on the day you choose.

2. Use the latest CMS installations. No matter what CMS you choose - WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, or something else – make sure you have the most current installment. This way, you will have all security improvements. As a rule, update patches are offered automatically. Don’t forget to perform backup before updating.

3. Update all plugins and themes and delete the ones you don’t need any more. Besides, get rid of third party plugins, because they bloat and slow down your site dramatically. 

4. Check RAID alarms and do not miss notes about any kind of disc failure, because sometimes only a single disc failure is accepted before it stops functioning.

5. Eliminate old and unnecessary content. Remove all databases, scripts, and files that are no longer used.

6. Clean your e-mail. If you don’t delete messages immediately, get the habit to check and delete them at least once a month. Thus, you make sure your account won’t reach the limit. To boost security, remove email addresses that are no longer used (for instance, “Info@”, “test@”, and “admin@”) to reduce the chances of crack down on spam, because these addresses are often targeted by hackers.


7. Change old passwords. Alter your password for at least every few months, and do not use the same password for different logins. 

вторник, 15 ноября 2016 г.

4 Reasons Why Your CDN Still Works Slowly


A CDN (content delivery network) is a technology that makes web page loading faster, but there are some factors that slow down your applications or website despite using such a network. If you are considering using a CDN, or have already implemented it, here are four things that you should settle up to achieve better performance.

Do you have enough hardware resources?

Although CDN offloads traffic from the origin server, your hardware may be not enough to provide sufficient speed even though it is lightened. If you observe usage spikes of CPU and RAM, it’s time to upgrade hardware resources. By the way, CPU spikes and leaks of memory can be caused by software bugs or misconfigurations. Ensure that you have the latest patches of OS and software, and check server configurations.

Problems of Network

Accidents can cause serious delays on several routes. Despite being a reliable and helpful, CDN cannot do anything with server’s ISP and prevent bandwidth bottleneck. Internet outages can be conditioned by natural disasters, DDoS attack, stealing and damage of optic cables, hardware outage and issues with ISP routing.

Third party objects

Today, sites often use objects from third parties: JavaScript, analytic tools, and media files, which helps to cut expenses. But CDN accelerates only what comes from your server, not third party servers. If such objects comprise more than 30% of page, improvement from CDN won’t be so considerable. The more third part objects are used, the less CDN effect is observed.

Inaccurate cache settings

The more objects from a web-site can be cached, the higher CDN benefits are. Mind that some objects, such as scripts and html files cannot be cached as they should be updated often, and you can set sow cache frequency for them. However, objects that do not change (static content) should be cached properly to optimize CDN use. Watch for cache control age: if it expires, the next request will get back to server instead of CDN’s edge.
CDN can help to solve most problems that solve slow speed of websites and applications, but some factors cannot be controlled with this technology. Watch for these four possible reasons for slow performance, and don’t let them spoil your CDN’s potential.



пятница, 11 ноября 2016 г.

How to Optimize CDN Performance and Uptime

If you your site runs on CDN service, you may be interested in ways to optimize its work and make it even faster than before. Here are some techniques worth of anybody’s consideration, because they are commonly beneficial for caching and performance being cost-efficient.

Setting a Default TTL

Setting a default time to live (TTL) for cached data is defined by the type of your website. If you have a news site that is updated several times a day, TTL of two minutes may be required. On the contrary, an e-commerce website where information stays almost the same every day may have a default TTL of 1 week. Ideally, browser cache time should be a bit shorter than CDN cache time so that a user would load data locally from browser instead of transferring CDN cache of original server. To find out what optimal TTL should be like, analyze how often web-site is updated, and how often it is visited by an average customer.

Strip Cookies for More Cache Hits

When a static object sets cookies on the client’s side, CDN assumes that cookies are dynamic, which causes cache miss. Check whether your origin server sets cookies, and, if it is allowed, change it. If that is not possible, see if your CDN can ignore cookies from origin server’s response. That will boost CDN ability to cache objects. 

Ignore Query Strings for More Cache Hits

Query strings can create the same problem of cacheability as described above. When they are included in URLs of static objects, they are considered to be unique objects and are requested from the origin server every time. It results into less cache hit value. If you disable such option, CDN will ignore query strings, which will improve cache hit. 

Use the If-Modified-Since Header

When a TTL file expires on CDN, it pulls a new copy from the origin server, even if the file was not changed. That results into unnecessary bandwidth consumption. The If-Modified-Since header may be used in requests from CDN to the origin server. Studies show that If-Modified-Since cuts origin strain by 70%, and that helps to offload the origin server considerably. 

Select an Appropriate Pricing Model

CDN market offers two different pricing models: per-gigabyte pricing and pipeline pricing. Simply stating, the first variant is good for sites with fluctuating traffic, while the second one will be suitable for web-sites with more or less stable traffic patterns. With per-gigabyte pricing client may have a certain amount of bandwidth a month that can be used when and how needed. With pipeline pricing (also called 95/5 pricing), certain amount of bandwidth per second is set. It is cheaper, and is better or sites that don’t experience considerable traffic spikes.



Popular services for URL shortening

If your web-site pages obtain long web-addresses, you can generate a short link that will be easy to type and use, and will make a text with link more visually attractive. There are several reliable free services that help to make a long web-address shorter. How do they work? You provide a long URL to some certain page, and get a shorter URL from service provider. URL shorteners work with the help of such function as redirect, or URL redirection. The shortened URL redirects users to the old long URL.
There are many free URL shortening services that are very simple in use: you just enter your web URL, click a button, and the new URL is generated. Then you can copy and paste the new URL wherever you want – in email, social media, other web-sites, etc. This type of service has many names: URL redirection, URL generator, URL shortener, URL forward, URL shortening, and URL shrinker (the last two names are most common). 

Here are some of free services:

    Ad.fly
    EasyURL
    Bit.ly
    Cutt.us
    doiop.com
    Fur.ly
    v.gd
    is.gd
    ity.im
    McAfee Secure Short
    Ow.ly
    Goo.gl
    Po.st
    Qr.net
    reducelnk
    ShrinkURL
    Su.pr
    TinyURL
    u.to
      Short URLs are quite common in social media, besides, some social media sites already have URL redirection in their platforms. These services can be used when you post URLs within a social network site. URL toolbars are preferable, because they are compatible with vast majority of web-browsers and JavaScript. When you visit a web-page, you can clink on the button from this toolbar, and it will create a short URL of the address. 

                                          пятница, 4 ноября 2016 г.

                                          Why Mobile On The Web Is So Important?

                                          Web performance can be optimized with the help of various techniques and tools, and one aspect that is frequently ignored is how mobile devices work. Find out how mobile CDN can be useful, and which way it ensures fast connection on all devices, including laptops, tablets and mobile phones.

                                          Studies show that about 56% of consumer traffic on the main US websites comes from mobile devices. Many online business keepers may not even suspect how much mobile traffic they are getting. Despite the fact that web businesses can be different, it is always important to examine analytics. If more than half of traffic comes from mobile devices, site testing should be approached differently. And sometimes, mobile optimization may take much more time and effort than on your desktop.

                                          Indeed, may mobile versions of sites lag behind original sites in the most important metrics: average time on site, bounce rate and the number of visited pages in one session. Statistics is even worse than you might think. An average US e-commerce mobile site loads about 6 seconds, while about half of consumers leave pages that load longer than three seconds.

                                          It is estimated that by 2017, connections via 3G and 3.5G-capable devices will outnumber the connections made with 2G. By 2020, 4G connection share will be most widespread. But today, most devices run on 2G and 3G, which means that you have to figure out the ways to decrease loading times. CDN is an evident solution of this problem: it puts your mobile content closer to visitors and decreases latency considerably.

                                          What does a CDN solution do to improve experience of mobile users?
                                          • ·         Applies gzip compression to keep mobile data traffic under control
                                          • ·         Uses video pacing to enable excessive progressive downloading of media files
                                          • ·         Adjusts network characteristics to mobile user with the help of TCP acceleration


                                          With the help of CDN and its numerous PoPs, you may decrease latency by 70% or even more! So if you have lot of mobile users accessing your site, consider using this technology.

                                          среда, 2 ноября 2016 г.

                                          IP address hacking: a myth or reality?

                                          Some people who see alteration of their IP address may assume that it has been stolen, and computer has slowed down because of it. But is that possible, and if yes, what the outcomes are?

                                          The truth is that your IP address cannot be hacked. The number is chanced because usually Service Providers serve several areas, and grant a new IP address every time you restore connection to the Internet. IP addresses can be assigned randomly, so their alteration does not affect functioning of your computer anyway. The IP address you used to have may be assigned to another device next time, but it does not mean that your computer is under threat: the next user cannot find out who exactly had this address before.

                                          Can a person hack you, if knowing your IP address? Type of Internet connection is what matters in this case. In most cases, it is unlikely: hacking with the help of IP address is a very difficult and long task, which may be not worth accomplishing. Except for people who have huge sums on their back accounts that can be accessed via computer. In fact, it is easier to access a PC using a virus rather than IP address: it cannot tell your real address, or name, or any other personal information. Remember that an IP address alone does not make you an easy target.


                                          But even if you have a static IP address, that does not makes the chances of being hacked higher. What makes it easy for hackers is outdate software and vulnerability of configuration. If hackers are aware about it, they can attack a machine. However, they should be really interested in your account to try hacking. In most cases, rootkits and viruses are used to obtain information.