A web accelerator is a proxy server that reduces website access time. They can be a self-contained hardware appliance or installable software.
Web accelerators may be installed on the client computer or mobile device, on ISP servers, on the server computer/network, or a combination. Accelerating delivery through compression requires some type of host-based server to collect, compress and then deliver content to a client computer.
Web accelerators may use several techniques to achieve this reduction in access time:
They may:
These techniques align with best practices which are typically recommended to improve the performance of web applications.[2]
Introduced in 2001-2002 [1], these applications generally serve to improve dial-up, broadband and other connections from which users may not be getting the best speed. Many Dialup ISPs offer web accelerators as a part of their services. The pre-compression operates much more efficiently than the on-the-fly compression of V.44 modems. Typically, website text is compacted to 5%, thus increasing effective dialup throughput to approximately 1000 kbit/s, and JPEG/GIF/PNG images are lossy-compressed to 15–20%, increasing effective throughput to 300 kbit/s.
The drawback of this approach is a loss in quality, where the graphics acquire compression artifacts taking on a blurry or colorless appearance. However, the transfer speed is dramatically improved. If desired, the user may choose to view uncompressed images instead, but at a much slower load rate.
Web accelerators are typically designed for web browsing and, sometimes, for e-mailing and can not improve speeds of streaming, gaming, P2P downloads or many other Internet applications. However, there is substantial work being done on client-side Web Accelerators for Application Delivery Networks by several companies including Cisco Systems and F5 Networks as the demand for SaaS and PaaS look set to grow among small and medium enterprises.
Other web accelerators are targeted at the web site or web application owners. This type of web accelerator is installed in front of web servers and application servers and use a variety of the above techniques to improve performance to all users accessing the accelerated web sites or web applications. Web server accelerators are sometimes referred to as reverse proxies or Application Delivery Controllers. This type of server side accelerator has the added benefit of off-loading transactions and connection managements from the web or applications servers and hence, reducing its CPU utilization and increasing web server or application scalability to handle more users with less bandwidth.
There may be two sections to the proxy as well - a server portion sits in front of the web server and captures the input and output from the server and a client portion sits in front of the end-user's web browser to capture the input and output from the browser. An example would be Opera Turbo.