Dear PropellerHeads: Recently I've seen several ads from software companies that claim their products "make the Internet faster." Is this legitimate? If so, how do they work?

A: In a country that can't get enough McDonald's drive-thru and NASCAR, software companies have learned that fast sells. But ignore all those late-night ads for PC tune-up software because the real innovation here is coming from the companies that make Web browsers.

Microsoft, Apple, Mozilla, Google and Opera are out to prove that their browsers - Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox, Chrome and Opera, respectively - are the fastest available. For us PropellerHeads, the really exciting stuff is what's happening to improve the speed of the Web outside the browsers.

In particular, Google has taken a many-pronged approach at speeding everything up. In 2010, they announced a new type of image file called "WebP" that is meant to compete with the "GIF" and "JPG" image file formats already in widespread use on websites (http://bit.ly/HYK058). WebP images are typically smaller (and thus faster to download) than GIF or JPG images, while still retaining that unpronounceable quality we expect when letting programmers name things.

They also began hosting on their own servers a set of commonly-used files (called "JavaScript libraries") that were already in use by most websites (http://bit.ly/HKl2Ya). Since Google's servers are faster and more geographically dispersed than just about everyone else's, this resulted in an instant speed-up for any sites that began using Google's copies of those files.

But the Web was still heavy metal, and Google prefers speed metal, so they attacked the problem of a too-slow Web at the network level. They released Domain Name System (DNS) servers, free for public use, that are probably faster than the ones your Internet provider has you using (http://bit.ly/HMkoN9). DNS servers convert user-friendly addresses (like google.com) into computer-friendly numeric codes (like 173.194.69.100) hundreds of times a day for the typical Web user, so speed is important.

And then they went really crazy. Those four letters at the beginning of a website address - "HTTP" - stand for HyperText Transfer Protocol. A protocol is a set of rules that determine how your computer talks to the Web server at the other end of the connection. Google thought that could be faster too, so they came up with a new set of rules (a new protocol) they call SPDY (http://bit.ly/IXsJyT). It's not an acronym; they just wanted a four-letter combination that sounded "speedy." Get it?

When you load a Web page in your browser, the Web server that you connect to sends back information about the page that you don't see. These so-called "headers" include the language the page was written in, how large it is and what software was used on the server to send it. SPDY shrinks these headers, resulting in less data transferred and faster load times.

If you watch the status bar in the bottom left of your browser, you'll notice that multiple connections to the server are made for each page you visit. First you'll see something like "Loading askthepropellerheads.com," followed by "Loading logo.gif," then "Loading image2.jpg," etc. Each of those "loading" messages represents a separate connection to the server. SPDY allows the server to send several files at the same time, reducing the total number of connections needed, which means quicker page loads.

SPDY is built to work with HTTP, not to replace it entirely, so even if it catches on, you'll never need to type "spdy://" into your address bar to start using it. In fact, if you've visited the Google home page or Gmail using a recent version of the Chrome browser (also made by Google), you've already used SPDY without realizing it.

Firefox will be introducing SPDY support soon and Silk (the Web browser that Amazon uses in their Kindle Fire tablet product) already uses it. After Google, Twitter is the next-largest site to announce support for the new protocol. A few of the largest Web server software makers have begun work on adding SPDY to their products as well, so its future looks promising.

Microsoft used SPDY as a starting-point to formulate "HTTP Speed+Mobility" (http://bit.ly/HGFbOs), although it's too early to guess what impact either technology will have in the near future.

For its part, Mozilla has participated in the development of similar efforts, including working with Google on WebM (http://bit.ly/HMrxwT), a video format related to WebP. Their Firefox browser is frequently updated with features intended to speed up the Web, whether initiated by Mozilla or not.

As great as one-hour eyeglasses and same-day dry cleaning are, there's never been a better time to surf the Web in a hurry.

When the PropellerHeads at Data Directions aren't busy with their IT projects, they love to answer questions on business or consumer technology. Email them to questions@askthepropellerheads.com or contact us at Data Directions Inc., 8510 Bell Creek Road, Mechanicsville, VA 23116. Visit our website at www.askthepropellerheads.com.