Cloudflare's Speed Brain makes websites load faster

Cloudflare, a leading web infrastructure and security company, this week announced the launch of Speed Brain, a new technology designed to significantly reduce web page load times. The announcement, made on September 25, 2024, marks a major advancement in web performance optimization.

Speed Brain is a feature that utilizes the Speculation Rules API to prefetch content for a user's likely next navigation. The primary goal is to download web pages to the browser cache before a user navigates to them, allowing for near-instantaneous loading when the actual navigation occurs.

According to Alex Krivit, Suleman Ahmad, and William Woodhead of Cloudflare, Speed Brain relies on an HTTP header called Speculation-Rules. This header contains a URL hosting a configuration that instructs the browser when to initiate prefetch requests for future navigations.

Impressive performance gains

Initial testing of Speed Brain has shown remarkable results:

• Lab testing of an aggressive loading model implementation demonstrated up to a 75% reduction in Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), which measures the time it takes for the largest visible element to load and render in the browser.
• For domains with Speed Brain enabled by default, Cloudflare observed a 45% reduction in LCP at the 75th percentile.
• Free websites on Cloudflare experienced LCP savings of about 0.88 to 1.1 seconds on each successful prefetch.

Availability and implementation

Cloudflare has made Speed Brain available to all plan types at no additional cost. The feature can be easily enabled through the Cloudflare dashboard or API. For free domains, Speed Brain has been enabled by default.

Technical details and safeguards

Speed Brain incorporates several key features and safeguards:

• It uses "document rules" to apply prefetching dynamically over the entire web page, eliminating the need for predefined static URL lists.
• The "conservative" eagerness setting is used initially to minimize the risk of incorrect prefetching.
• Prefetch requests are only accepted for static content already stored in Cloudflare's CDN cache, avoiding potential issues with dynamic content.

Browser compatibility and network impact

Currently, Speed Brain is compatible with Chromium-based browsers (version 121 or later), such as Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge. According to Cloudflare Radar, approximately 70% of requests from visitors come from Chromium browsers.

The impact across Cloudflare's network is significant:

• Cloudflare handles hundreds of billions of requests for HTML content daily.
• About half of these requests are cached.
• Around 1% of cached requests are for navigational prefetching made by visitors.
• Every 24 hours, Speed Brain can save more than 82 years worth of latency.

Future developments

Cloudflare has outlined several future enhancements for Speed Brain:

1. Leveraging machine learning to create more accurate and site-specific prefetch predictors.
2. Developing an adaptive speculative model that improves upon the current conservative offering.
3. Enhancing observability through Real User Measurements (RUM) tools.
4. Implementing prerendering capabilities.
5. Introducing Argo Smart Browsing, which combines an advanced version of Speed Brain with Argo Smart Routing.

Expert opinions and industry context

While Cloudflare's announcement does not include direct quotes from industry experts, the company's position as a major player in web infrastructure lends credibility to the significance of this development. The introduction of Speed Brain represents a continuation of ongoing efforts in the web performance optimization field, building on previous technologies like HTTP/2's server push and Early Hints.

Implementation and recommendations

To implement Speed Brain, website owners can navigate to the Speed > Optimization > Content Optimization > Speed Brain section in the Cloudflare Dashboard and enable the feature. Cloudflare strongly recommends that customers also enable Real User Measurements (RUM) to gain visibility into the performance improvements provided by Speed Brain and other Cloudflare features.

The introduction of Speed Brain by Cloudflare marks a significant advancement in web page loading technology. With its potential to reduce load times by up to 75% and its wide availability across Cloudflare's customer base, Speed Brain could have a substantial impact on the overall user experience of the web. As the technology evolves and incorporates machine learning capabilities, its impact is likely to grow even further.

Key Facts

• Announced on September 25, 2024
• Available to all Cloudflare plan types at no additional cost
• Enabled by default for free domains
• Compatible with Chromium-based browsers (version 121 or later)
• Reduces Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) by up to 75% in lab tests
• Observes a 45% reduction in LCP at 75th percentile for enabled domains
• Saves 0.88 to 1.1 seconds on each successful prefetch for free websites
• Can save more than 82 years worth of latency every 24 hours across Cloudflare's network

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