Google have announced a new protocol named SPDY (which we're supposed to pronounce as "speedy") which is supposed to help speed up webpages. This new protocol interfaces with the existing HTTP protocol when installed on servers and reportedly can speed up page load times by up to 64% which is pretty impressive, though I'd prefer to see what this figure is like in "real world" examples.
The way SPDY works is it sits in front of the HTTP protocol (imagine the ISO OSI 7 layer network model if that helps) and acts as an intermediary level that affects open connections and the way the data is transmitted across them. This protocol can apparently open an unlimited number of connections over the same TCP session due to the way requests are interleaved, but I think in reality there will be a limit imposed by the CPU time available on the server and the available bandwidth. The reason I suspect this may be the case is that it having to compress all requests, similar to how using mod_gzip works, means that it is more processor intensive.
They're obviously quite keen to speed up the browsing experience as they've also prepared a special version of Chrome that uses this new technology. It will of course only make a difference when browsing sites running of webservers using the SPDY protocol. What would be nice is to one day see this transferred to the mobile browser as this is where it could benefit from the technology the most. Though it's possible the additional work required by the client after receiving the data could cause shorter battery life due to using more processing power.
