Ryan Joy (atxryan)

"Five years ago most of the attention on web performance was focused on the backend. Since then we’ve learned that 80% of the time users wait for a web page to load is the responsibility of the frontend. I feel this same bias when it comes to identifying and guarding against single points of failure that can bring down a web site – the focus is on the backend and there’s not enough focus on the frontend. For larger web sites, the days of a single server, single router, single data center, and other backend SPOFs are way behind us. And yet, most major web sites include scripts and stylesheets in the typical way that creates a frontend SPOF. Even more worrisome – many of these scripts are from third parties for social widgets, web analytics, and ads."

http://www.stevesouders.com/blog/2010/06/01/frontend-spof/