165350 - RFE: Allow users to specify servers to allow/disallow pipelining

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core :: Networking: HTTP, enhancement)

Description

[Matthew Middleton (:zzxc)]

This RFE is to allow users who use pipelining to choose certain sites which to
and which to not use pipelining on.

A blacklist should be added to allow for sites with transparent proxies messing
things up or other problems to not use pipelining for these sites only.

Also, an option should be added for users to enable pipelining for ONLY allowed
sites (on a whitelist).  Some user may want pipelining enabled on a photo site.
 So, a user could use the "pipelining ONLY for allowed sites" option and add
.some-photo-site.com to their whitelist.

Comment 1

[Darin Fisher]

i don't think this will ever make it's way into the mozilla UI.  but, we might..
might consider something like this as a hidden preference, though i'm not
convinced that even this is good idea.

Comment 2

[Matthew Middleton (:zzxc)]

Yes, I do admit that this is something that may confuse some end users.

However, if that end user finds that he/she cannot see pictures correctly on a
site, runs to the release notes and sees to add the domain to the "don't use
pipelining" list this would prove handy.  This would be better than telling the
user to disable pipelining altogether, since it may just be one site.

Whether it is worth improved performance to confuse some users is the question.
 (but what else do you expect in advanced http networking options?)  In my
opinion, enabling pipelining by site isn't a big step from putting pipelining in
the UI in the first place.

Nevertheless, it would help in debugging and for people using mozilla for
special uses.

Comment 3

[Darin Fisher]

pipelining will eventually be removed from the UI when we have a good default
that enables pipelining conditionally.  it was only added to the UI to help
encourage people to test it out.

i think most users would be terribly confused by this preference.  this is not a
good long-term solution at all.  what we need is for folks to submit bug reports
when they encounter problematic sites, and then we need to put together a good
black-list, and finally we need to evangelize sites that cannot be black-listed.

this will work, but it will take time and energy.  in the end, i think we'll be
able to enable pipelining by default.

that's why i say that at most, i might consider a hidden pref containing a list
of black-listed (or white-listed) servers or perhaps domains.  but, that would
really only be for like at best 1% of the mozilla users.  hence, i don't
personally think this is the right thing to spend time on.

Comment 4

[benc]

Maybe pipelining could be another directive we put into what I've proposed as
"PAC2"?

That would allow people to manage their pipelining usage any number of ways. We
wouldn't have to build a GUI to support it, it seems everytime we add a manager
(security, cookies, password, etc) we end up spawning dozens of UI bugs.

Comment 5

[Darin Fisher]

-> default owner

Comment 6

[Steve Roussey (:sroussey)]

The reverse would be good too... allow a server to specify pipelining for future connections via an http header.

Comment 7

[Patrick McManus [:mcmanus]]

the issue here isn't really server support - it is network path and scheduling algorithms. If anything, pipelining will just be removed in favor of h2.