Use Early Hints to send an HTTP 103 status code with preliminary HTTP headers at the client request stage, so that a browser can preload critical website resources or preconnect to a specific domain while waiting for the final HTML response.

Why you need it

For non-cacheable resources and cache misses, ​Akamai​ edge servers need to contact your origin server, leaving the connection between the client’s browser and edge servers idle until the full response arrives. With Early Hints, browsers can use that waiting time to preload the resources you specify – such as top CSS stylesheets, web fonts, logos, or critical JavaScript – as well as preconnect to third-party or subdomains, which are often used to host static assets such as images. This significantly improves the rendering experience.

Key performance benefits:

• Critical resources are requested and cached by the browser by the time the HTML response arrives.
• Warmed-up connections for other resources referenced in the HTML response.
• Improved performance KPIs, such as Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) or Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).

How to set up Early Hints

Early Hints are available for Ion and Dynamic Site Accelerator products. See the Property Manager documentation for full usage instructions.