How Small Can A Useful Website Be?

When the web became faster, websites became heavier.

Modern pages routinely ship megabytes of JavaScript, large image bundles, analytics scripts, trackers, fonts, advertisements, video players, and frameworks.

For many services that may be justified.

For many others, it is not.

Net Work ? started with a simple question:

If a user asks "does the Internet work?", what is the smallest useful answer we can provide?

The answer turned out to be surprisingly small.

A single page.

A few requests.

A single word.

YES.

The homepage performs a tiny browser-side HTTP reachability test.

If the browser can successfully reach this site through DNS, TLS and HTTP, the page shows YES.

If repeated requests fail after the page has loaded, it shows NO.

Nothing more.

No account.

No dashboard.

No signup form.

No notification bell.

No infinite scroll.

This simplicity is intentional.

Many connectivity checks require command-line tools, operating-system utilities, or knowledge that casual users do not have.

A browser is usually already open.

A URL is usually easier than an explanation.

There is another advantage.

Small pages are difficult to break.

A tiny page loads faster.

A tiny page has fewer dependencies.

A tiny page has fewer moving parts.

A tiny page often survives poor network conditions better than a complicated one.

Net Work ? currently weighs only a few dozen kilobytes.

That is smaller than many modern icons.

Smaller than many advertisements.

Smaller than many loading animations.

The homepage currently weighs only 7 KB.

About 1 second on a 56 kbps dial-up connection.

Measured in dial-up seconds rather than megabytes.

Slow by modern standards.

Fast by dial-up standards.

Still usable.

The goal is not nostalgia.

The goal is not to recreate the web of the 1990s.

The goal is simply to ask:

What is the minimum amount of technology required to answer one question well?

For this website, the answer is:

YES.