This post is based on a chapter from Even Faster Web Sites, the follow-up to High Performance Web Sites. Posts in this series include: chapters and contributing authors, Splitting the Initial Payload, Loading Scripts Without Blocking, Coupling Asynchronous Scripts, Positioning Inline Scripts, Sharding Dominant Domains, Flushing the Document Early, Using Iframes Sparingly, and Simplifying CSS Selectors.
Rule 9 from High Performance Web Sites says reducing DNS lookups makes web pages faster. This is true, but in some situations, it’s worthwhile to take a bunch of resources that are being downloaded on a single domain and split them across multiple domains. I call this domain sharding. Doing this allows more resources to be downloaded in parallel, reducing the overall page load time.
To determine if domain sharding makes sense, you have to see if the page has a dominant domain being used for downloading resources. The following HTTP waterfall chart, for Yahoo.com, is indicative of a site being slowed down by a dominant domain. This waterfall chart shows the page being downloaded in Internet Explorer 7, which only allows two parallel downloads per hostname. The vertical lines show that typically there are only two simultaneous downloads at any given time. Looking at the resource URLs, we see that almost all of them are served from “l.yimg.com.” Sharding these resources across two domains, such as “l1.yimg.com” and “l2.yimg.com”, would cause the resources to download in about half the time.
Most of the U.S. top ten web sites do domain sharding. YouTube uses i1.ytimg.com, i2.ytimg.com, i3.ytimg.com, and i4.ytimg.com. Live Search uses ts1.images.live.com, ts2.images.live.com, ts3.images.live.com, and ts4.images.live.com. Both of these sites are sharding across four domains. What’s the optimal number? Yahoo! released a study that recommends sharding across at least two, but no more than four, domains. Above four, performance actually degrades.
Not all browsers are restricted to just two parallel downloads per hostname. Opera 9+ and Safari 3+ do four downloads per hostname. Internet Explorer 8, Firefox 3, and Chrome 1+ do six downloads per hostname. Sharding across two domains is a good compromise that improves performance in all browsers.
Martin Borthiry | 14-May-09 at 6:09 am | Permalink
Great article!
I think that in some cases could be possible to check the browser type and define dynamically the number of hostnames. The script has a time cost, but it reduce the DNS lookup time for newest browsers.
Party Ark | 18-May-09 at 11:48 am | Permalink
Good article – on thing to remember, however, is NOT to implement this technique for SSL (https) unless you’re able to secure ALL the ’sharded’ subdomains. There are certificates that can handle multiple subdomains, but most don’t. And if you don’t have one, your user will end up with all sorts of warning messages about mixed resources and a broken ‘padlock’ symbol.
Éric | 19-May-09 at 2:37 am | Permalink
Also, for SSL the cost of a new connection is higher, so having to much domain / to much connections could be negative far more quicker than with non-ssl domains.
With new browers that have 6 threads per domain, it’s probably safe to stay with only one domain on SSL (and never more than two).
Guillermo Quintana | 21-May-09 at 9:28 pm | Permalink
I’ve been doing quite a bit of research regarding domain shredding. Is there a tool or method i could use ( short of proto-typing) to test using 2 vs. 4 host manes for static images across my website? My testing is limited to only http requests as i would prefer to leave all of my assets for ssl under a single hostname
topspeeds | 21-Sep-09 at 6:16 pm | Permalink
I’ve been doing quite a bit of research regarding domain shredding. Is there a tool or method i could use ( short of proto-typing) to test using 2 vs. 4 host manes for static images across my website? My testing is limited to only http requests as i would prefer to leave all of my assets for ssl under a single hostname
http://www.methoo.com
Matt | 13-Oct-09 at 7:23 am | Permalink
“Not all browsers are restricted to just two parallel downloads per hostname.”
How sure are you about that? My impression was that installing IE8 raises the simultaneous connections limit by changing a system-wide setting.
Have you tested Firefox or Chrome on a fresh install of Windows that’s never seen IE8?