Tim discovered inefficiency in communication between squids and backend servers (and eventually, clients) – the problem was lack of Content-Length: header for dynamically generated content. Though HTTP/1.1 uses chunked encoding inside keep-alive connections, HTTP/1.0 completely relies on Content-Length:, so lack of it simply forces connections to close (and have expensive reopens afterwards).
Generally, HTTP/1.0 lacked a footer – additional metadata which could be calculated after whole request. So add Content-Length footer, content compression which smoothes the content bits, and you’ve got HTTP 2.0 – with headers, footers, and rounded corners.
Ah, and solution could be various – from increasing compression buffers, to overhauling whole output buffering code. It should make the site faster anyway – good job, Tim.
domas mituzas 