[torrently]

He uses a SPDY enabled intermediary proxy with zero caching calling out - per request - to source http 1.1 sites. There was no world where that getup makes any sense at all, and his position at Akamai doesn't change that basic reality. This is saying that a performance car is no faster than a economy sedan by forcing the former to drive behind the latter.

At an absolute minimum he should have enabled caching and then measured performance on the second run both with and without SPDY. As someone who has setup a rig exactly like this, using a SPDY enabled reverse proxy, the benefits are enormous.

Many, many absolutely terrible ideas have persisted on HN because of the appeal to authority (like listening to Digg's opinion on databases). It is not useful.

[dsl]

I mentioned this in another post, but calling Contendo simply a "intermediary proxy" is disingenuous. It gave SPDY an unfair advantage in my opinion.

But again, feel free to suggest better testing methodologies. I look forward to your results.