The Request Tax: Re-evaluating 20 Years of Web Performance Dogma

Speaker: Alex Moon

Room: CC 236

Time: Sun 3:00 pm – 3:30 pm

Format: Lecture (30 Min + Q&A)

Difficulty: Introductory

Track: Development & Dev Tools

Additional Tags: Networks

Presenter Location: In-person

Experience: first time speaking / several-th time speaking

At: anywhere / at lfnw

Description:

For nearly two decades, web developers have lived by a simple rule: reduce your HTTP requests. In the era of HTTP/1.x, that advice made perfect sense — TCP handshakes, head‑of‑line blocking, and connection limits meant that bundling everything together was the only way to achieve acceptable performance.

But the web has changed. With HTTP/3, QUIC, and modern CDN architectures, Alex has observed real‑world cases — especially in Headless WordPress and WPGraphQL — where smaller, granular requests outperform monolithic ones, thanks to better caching behavior and more efficient delivery at the network layer.

This talk investigates what Alex calls the “Request Tax” and asks whether our long‑held performance dogma still applies. Attendees will explore:

The Wire — How HTTP/3’s UDP‑based streams and multiplexing reshape the cost model of a request

The Cache — Why giant all‑in‑one fetches can sabotage CDN efficiency, and how granular requests improve cache reuse

The Data — Comparisons between legacy patterns and modern architectures, backed by research and Alex’s own testing

This session doesn’t promise a silver bullet. Instead, it offers a clear‑eyed look at where old rules still matter, where they fail, and why it may finally be time to stop fearing the humble HTTP request.

Target Audience:

Web developers

Sysadmins

Web performance practitioners