SPDY is a network protocol developed by Google in July 2012 and officially deprecated as of February 2015. Pronounced “speedy,” the protocol was designed to improve upon HTTP/1.1 to reduce the loading time of web pages. It achieved this goal by compressing HTTP headers, multiplexing transfers to avoid “head of the line” delays, and prioritizing requests to improve how documents are rendered in the browser.

SPDY was the basis of the HTTP/2 protocol, an open standard introduced on May 14, 2015.

Network terms

  • How to increase your download speed.