Http get request packet size in bytes

Question

How many bytes of data does a typical HTTP get request consume. For instance if I request a page from the server through a browser how many bytes of data would be sent?

Answer 1

Pretty typical request, 430 bytes:

GET /ga.js HTTP/1.1\r\n
Host: www.google-analytics.com\r\n
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.2) Gecko/20090729 Firefox/3.5.2 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)\r\n
Accept: */*\r\n
Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5\r\n
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate\r\n
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7\r\n
Keep-Alive: 300\r\n
Connection: keep-alive\r\n
Referer: http://stackoverflow.com/\r\n
If-Modified-Since: Mon, 31 Aug 2009 17:13:58 GMT\r\n
\r\n
\r\n

Request with a long query string and a small cookie 657 bytes)

GET /pixel;r=978178957;fpan=0;fpa=1241112640-44259546-69321280;ns=0;url=http%3A%2F%2Fstackoverflow.com%2F;ref=;ce=1;je=1;sr=1920x1200x32;dg=E5912-W-MO-5;dst=1;et=1252061014745;tzo=-120;a=p-c1rF4kxgLUzNc HTTP/1.1\r\n
Host: pixel.quantserve.com\r\n
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.2) Gecko/20090729 Firefox/3.5.2 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)\r\n
Accept: image/png,image/*;q=0.8,*/*;q=0.5\r\n
Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5\r\n
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate\r\n
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7\r\n
Keep-Alive: 300\r\n
Connection: keep-alive\r\n
Referer: http://stackoverflow.com/\r\n
Cookie: uid=1274108650-45267447-66848880; mc=1137458542-57565784-88898864\r\n
\r\n
\r\n

Answer 2

Use Fiddler to intercept the request and see for yourself.

Answer 3

It varies, especially when it comes to GET queries or POST requests, but I'd estimate it about 0.5—1k.

Requesting a page from the browser, though, may also result in requesting pictures, stylesheets and other referenced content.

Edit: originally I put in the estimation for request+reply.

Answer 4

I would suggest you use a full packet sniffer like wireshark. You would love it :)

Get it here: http://www.wireshark.org/