HTTPmelding

HTTPmelding is a term that has emerged in certain technical discussions, referring to the practice of combining or "melding" HTTP requests or responses. This is not a standardized HTTP feature but rather a conceptual approach to optimizing network communication. The core idea behind HTTPmelding is to reduce the overhead associated with initiating and terminating multiple separate HTTP connections.

By merging multiple requests into a single transmission, or by bundling multiple pieces of data within a single response, it's theoretically possible to achieve lower latency and reduced bandwidth consumption. This can be particularly beneficial in scenarios where there are many small, independent data transfers required. For example, a web page might require numerous small image files or script resources. Instead of fetching each individually, HTTPmelding would aim to consolidate these into fewer, larger transfers.

While the concept is straightforward, its practical implementation can be complex. It requires careful management of how individual requests are identified and processed within the merged transmission, and how the corresponding responses are separated and delivered to the correct client-side components. This could involve custom protocols layered on top of HTTP, or specific application-level logic.

It is important to note that HTTPmelding is not a part of the official HTTP specifications. Standard HTTP/2 and HTTP/3, however, introduce features like multiplexing and header compression that achieve similar performance benefits by reducing overhead and allowing multiple requests and responses to share a single connection, effectively addressing some of the motivations behind the HTTPmelding concept without requiring a departure from standard protocols.