Abstract
The advent of Web technology has made Web servers core elements of future communication networks. Although the amount of traffic that Web servers must handle has grown explosively during the last decade, the performance limitations and the proper tuning of Web servers are still not well understood. In this paper we present an end-to-end queueing model for the performance of Web servers, encompassing the impacts of client workload characteristics, server harware/software configuration, communication protocols, and interconnect topologies. The model has been implemented in a simulation tool, and performance predictions based on the model are shown to match very well with the performance of a Web server in a test lab environment. The simulation tool forms an excellent basis for development of a Decision Support System for the configuration tuning and sizing of Web servers.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
M.F. Arlitt and C.L. Williamson, Internet Web servers: workload characterization and performance implications, IEEE Transactions on Networking 5 (1997) 631-645.
AT&T Easy World Wide Web service, http://www.att.com/easywww/.
AT&T Just4Me service, http://www.att.com/just4me/.
[4] AT&T Connect 'N Save VoIP service, http://www.connectnsave.att.com/.
T. Berners-Lee, R. Fielding and H. Frystyk, Hypertext transfer protocol — HTTP/1.0, RFC 1945, Internet request for comments (1995).
M. Crovella and A. Bestavros, Self-similarity in World-Wide Web traffic: evidence and possible causes, in: Proc. of ACM Sigmetrics, Philadelphia, PA, 1996, pp. 160-169.
J. Dilley, R. Friedrich, T. Jin and J. Rolia, Web server performance measurements and modeling techniques, Performance Evaluation 33 (1998) 5-26.
R. Fielding, J. Gettys, J. Mogul, H. Frystyk and T. Berners-Lee, Hypertext transfer protocol — HTTP/1.1, RFC 2068, Internet request for comments (1997).
J. Heidemann, K. Obraczka and J. Touch, Modeling the performance of HTTP over several transport protocols, IEEE Transactions on Networking 5 (1997) 616-630.
W. Leland, M. Taqqu, W. Willinger and D. Wilson, On the self-similar nature of Ethernet traffic, IEEE Transactions on Networking 2 (1994) 1-15.
V. Paxson and S. Floyd, Wide area traffic: the failure of Poisson, IEEE Transactions on Networking 3 (1995) 226-244.
P.K. Reeser, R.D. van der Mei and R. Hariharan, An analytic model of an HTTP Web server, in: Teletraffic Engineering in a Competitive World, eds. P. Key and D. Smith, Proc. of 16th International Teletraffic Congress (Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1999) pp. 1199-1208.
L.P. Slothouber, A model of Web server performance, http://louvx.biap.com/whitepapers/performance/overview/.
W.R. Stevens, TCP/IP Illustrated, Vol. 1 (Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 1996).
WebStone, Mindcraft Inc., http://www.mindcraft.com/.
S. Weiberle, Private communications with support engineers from Sun Microsystems.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
van der Mei, R., Hariharan, R. & Reeser, P. Web Server Performance Modeling. Telecommunication Systems 16, 361–378 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1016667027983
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1016667027983