Essay on World Wide Web and Cache Memory

Submitted By alhena12345
Words: 1143
Pages: 5

Explain the user side and server side factors that influence the performance of a website

In this piece of coursework I will be talking about specific factors that affect websites performance to work, this could also include their hardware and software specification.
First of an all I am going to start off with the user side factors and the four main ones are:
Download speed
Browser
Cache memory
Processor speed
Download speed - Download speed can affect the website performance because this could affect how quickly the website loads so you can use their services properly. For example, if you have dial-up because it is around 56MB and will be defiantly slower than broadband, this causeses a lot of buffering so it will take along time with plug-in. Download speed is mostly based around broadband and the network speed that you may have, you have to have broadband in your area for your connection to be fast. If your broadband is good, then the faster you can download files, the speed can also depend on the size of the ram which will all make the download speed faster. You have to think about this when making a website, you have to think about other people’s download speed and if they will be able to load up the webpage quick enough and for everything to work.

Browser – This is software that’s used for WWW (world wide web) the user can search anything needed to over the browser, downloading things normally happen over the browser, this can then be more secure for companies to make it safe. There are a few different types of browser such as Firefox, Google chrome and Internet explorer. They are all different and can have different speeds while surfing on the internet. When making your own website you have think about people using Internet Explorer might not be able to load things which Google Chrome might be able to load up.

Cache memory – This is similar to RAM, its used as a temporary file if the browser cant find the proper RAM. This is used to store files over the internet. The cache memory can become full because of the computer stores a lot of data on it, so it’s always good to clear it every now and then as it can start to slow down. If you are making a website, you have to make sure that you don’t put too many images as the website might not be able to work on an old computer and will take a long time to buffer.

Processing speed – It is pretty important to have a quick processing speed if you require a lot of RAM so things can be stored easily. The processing speed is like a main component, that’s why it should be fast as it will speed everything else up such as loading up programmes and files so everything should be a lot quicker. When making a website, you have to make sure that you don’t have too much to load up, such as pictures and links as it will take a long time to buffer and work.
I am now going to talk about the server side factors, these are:

Web server capacity
Available bandwidth
Executions to be performed before the page loads
Number of hits
Type of files
Web server capacity – This is if you load each page, then the computer will copy each file and store it into the cache memory. So if someone makes a website they will have to consider the memory because someone could be using an old computer so it might not have much memory which means it will be slow and might not work. The more memory on the website, the more it will take up in the cache memory. So to conclude, a website with less memory would mean that lots of different computers would able to load up and be able to work so when making your website you have to make sure that this is done.
Available bandwidth – When someone makes a website they will have to consider bandwidth, not everyone is going to have a good bandwidth as some people may have dial-up. So the website would have to have less memory so it downloads on every bandwidth as it could take longer on different ones so its better