EdgeCast Networks makes the web faster with Google’s mod_pagespeed

Hayes

Josh

by Joshua Marantz, Google PageSpeed Team, and Hayes Kim, EdgeCast Networks

At Google we want the whole web to be faster. We've built a fast browser, improved image encodings, developed better network protocols, and provided PageSpeed tools and optimization libraries. In November 2010, we launched mod_pagespeed, an open-source Apache module that speeds up web sites by rewriting HTML, JavaScript, CSS and images to reduce size, eliminate HTTP requests, and improve browser performance.

mod_pagespeed adoption is growing rapidly. Now EdgeCast Networks, one of the world’s largest CDN operators, has integrated mod_pagespeed into the core of its content delivery network and is making it available as an option in its Application Delivery Network (ADN) service offering.

Hayes Kim, EdgeCast Senior Product Manager, had this to say: "Edgecast has integrated mod_pagespeed alongside our HTTP engine and deployed this to our ADN edge locations worldwide. Our solution enables optimizations in real-time and local to the end user, leveraging the full compute capacity of our edge nodes. We leverage the local edge caches for the unoptimized resources and then cache the subsequent optimized resources processed by mod_pagespeed. EdgeCast's integration can speed up millions of websites either served directly by EdgeCast or indirectly through hosting providers using our technology."

Hayes says that early results show up to a 77% pageview performance improvement when leveraging the ADN service with mod_pagespeed, and a 33% performance improvement from mod_pagespeed alone.

Gogotech, an e-commerce solution provider, has been evaluating EdgeCast's ADN and edge optimizer services, with promising results so far. "This solution looks to be a strong contender for further improving our offerings to Gogotech clients, and we are looking forward to seeing it develop," said Alex Bolduc, IT Director at Gogotech.

The following images and this video show how mod_pagespeed and EdgeCast's ADN are speeding up a Gogotech site.



You can find more details about EdgeCast's mod_pagespeed integrated offerings here. And you can find information on Google’s PageSpeed technologies and tools here.


Joshua Marantz is a Software Engineer on Google’s Pagespeed Automatic team in Cambridge, MA, which is dedicated to making the web faster for everyone. Josh has been working on making software run fast for several decades, at Google and before that on accelerated chip simulation.

Hayes Kim has over eleven years of product development and leadership experience in online advertising, e-commerce, web acceleration, and social media. At EdgeCast, Hayes manages the development of the core HTTP technology that powers the CDN and Application Delivery Network.

Posted by Scott Knaster, Editor