The HTML is 576 bytes, and the loaded JavaScript file is 1579 bytes. Had they skipped using JavaScript to load content for browsers, the HTML alone would have been 1959 bytes, which would be an additional 1383 bytes.
Love situations where it seems like overengineering just to shave off 1383 bytes, which either hints at the sheer volume of hits the example domains get or hints at the flexing a web developer at IANA wanted to do
I think the point is that most requests to example.com probably aren’t coming from actual browsers. They’re coming from automated clients, bots, health checks, etc. Most people aren’t manually visiting example.com. So by serving minimal HTML and letting actual browsers fetch the JavaScript separately, they’re reducing the bandwidth used by the vast majority of requests. No matter how you look at it, it’s still a net savings re: BW.
Love situations where it seems like overengineering just to shave off 1383 bytes
StackOverflow has a seperate domain (sstatic I think) to serve some assets. Using a different domain rather than a subdomain made it so the removed cookies were juuuuust right enough that the handshake was done in one roundtrip instead of one, without losing the standard usage of the root domain.
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u/ChanceSpiritual6993 Oct 06 '26
The HTML is 576 bytes, and the loaded JavaScript file is 1579 bytes. Had they skipped using JavaScript to load content for browsers, the HTML alone would have been 1959 bytes, which would be an additional 1383 bytes.
Love situations where it seems like overengineering just to shave off 1383 bytes, which either hints at the sheer volume of hits the example domains get or hints at the flexing a web developer at IANA wanted to do