Hi, we use a second domain to serve our static images. We do this mainly because ‘in the old days’ some browsers had a maximum of 2 parallel connections. Nowadays, modern browsers have 6 or more:
Is it still wise to have a second domain for images or should we forget about that and dismantle this solution altogether? We will save ourselves the second DNS-lookup…
In HTTP 1.x it depends on many things e.g. how many resources are on the page, where the visitors are i.e. if you use a CDN will it improve their experience?, etc.
A test waterfall might give us a better picture to be able to advise you.
Andy, thank you. We still use HTTP 1.0 unfortunately, will change this year to 1.1. My question was in general, but maybe this screenshot of our waterfall can help you. You can see that we now use 2 domains. This test was with IE8.
For that short of a waterfall it generally doesn’t make sense to do it just to increase the number of connections in parallel. As Andy mentioned, there could be other reasons to do it (if you want to use a CDN for example).
Thanks for your answers. This real life test also supports this, also because for mobile sharding domains can be a problem: Build headless commerce that lets your customers lead the way. - Salesforce.com