How to parallelize downloads across hostnames on WordPress?

2 comments

1. Details

   Web browsers put a limit on the number of concurrent connections they will make to a host. When there are many resources that need to be downloaded, a backlog of resources waiting to be downloaded will form. The browser will make up as many simultaneous connections to the server as the browser allows in order to download these resources, but then will queue the rest and wait for the requests to finish.

   The time spent waiting for a connection to finish is referred to as blocking and reducing this blocking time can result in a faster loading page. The waterfall diagram below shows a page which loads 45 resources from the same host. Notice how long the resources are blocked (the brown segments), before they are downloaded (the purple segments) as they wait for a free connection.

   ---

   So here is a hack to implement it on WordPress.

   In order to work properly, all subdomains/hostnames MUST have the same structure/path. Ex:

   • example.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/myimage.jpg
   • media1.example.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/myimage.jpg
   • media2.example.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/myimage.jpg

   Add to functions.php

   function parallelize_hostnames($url, $id) {
    $hostname = par_get_hostname($url);
    $url =  str_replace(parse_url(get_bloginfo('url'), PHP_URL_HOST), $hostname, $url);
    return $url;
   }
   
   function par_get_hostname($name) {
    //add your subdomains below, as many as you want.
    $subdomains = array('media1.mydomain.com','media2.mydomain.com');
    $host = abs(crc32(basename($name)) % count($subdomains));
    $hostname = $subdomains[$host];
    return $hostname;
   }
   add_filter('wp_get_attachment_url', 'parallelize_hostnames', 10, 2);
   

2. This is mainly due do HTTP/1.1 in which browsers open on average 6 connections per hostname.

   If you are running over HTTPS with a provider that supports HTTP/2, this warning can usually be safely ignored now. With HTTP/2 multiple resources can now be loaded in parallel over a single connection.

   —

   However, if you need to fix it, you can follow the below steps:

   1. Create additional subdomains such as:
      domain.com static1.domain.com static2.domain.com

   2. Simply add the following code to your WordPress theme’s functions.php file. And replace the $subdomains values with your subdomains.

   All subdomains/hostnames MUST have the same structure/path.

   function parallelize_hostnames($url, $id) {
   $hostname = par_get_hostname($url); //call supplemental function
   $url = str_replace(parse_url(get_bloginfo('url'), PHP_URL_HOST), $hostname, $url);
   return $url;
   }
   
   function par_get_hostname($name) {
   $subdomains = array('static1.domain.com','static2.domain.com');
   $host = abs(crc32(basename($name)) % count($subdomains));
   $hostname = $subdomains[$host];
   return $hostname;
   }
   
   add_filter('wp_get_attachment_url', 'parallelize_hostnames', 10, 2);
   

   Read more about the parallelize downloads across hostnames warning and why you probably don’t need to worry about this anymore.

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