Albums are now faster when hosted at jalbum.net

A few weeks ago we enabled HTTP/2 for all albums hosted here that are using https. This is done automatically, so there is no need to upload your albums again. Just make sure you access your albums using https.

Using HTTP/2 makes the albums load much faster, especially over long distances.
We have checked what HTTP/2 makes to the load times of an album with 500 images in a folder. The album in this example had to travel across the globe (between Stockholm and Australia) and using HTTP/2 makes a noticeable difference:

Previously HTTP/1.1 was used which has been around since 1997. The new version called HTTP/2 makes better use of the TCP connections between the browser and server so multiple resources can be fetched simultaneously by each connection instead of only one at a time which HTTP/1.1 could do. The browser could open multiple connections when using HTTP/1.1 to load resources more efficiently, but having to handle multiple connections puts a strain on all the network resources from the client computer, via routers to the web server, so browsers usually open at the most just a few connections to each domain. Tricks to spread the resources on a web page to different domains can be used. But this can’t be done for albums, since all the resources (except maybe JavaScript libraries and fonts) have to be loaded from the one domain the album is hosted on.

When using HTTP/2 this is no longer an issue, since each connection can be shared among many resources. This also means that HTTP/2 lowers the effect of high latency (“long ping times”). The jAlbum servers are located in Sweden, so within Europe, the latency is quite low (usually less than 40ms). But when viewing an album from another continent, the latency can be several 100ms. As seen in the example above HTTP/2 minimizes the effect of this so albums fetched over long distances are a lot faster. This is important for our users in America and Asia. Tests run by users in the US have shown that load times for a typical album went from 4.5 seconds to 2.4 seconds. A dramatic difference!

So, all you have to do is to make sure the URLs you use for your albums hosted here start with https, and then your albums will be quicker too. If you are using an old account profile in the jAlbum desktop software at Tools->Upload/Manage… it might say that the “Web address” starts with HTTP. Then just Remove that account profile and Add it again.