Improving the performance of HTTP persistent connections
of Dissertation Entitled: Improving the Performance of HTTP Persistent Connections submitted by Eric Man-Kit Chan for the degree of MSc in Information Technology at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University in December 2001. Traditionally, TCP was designed for generic purpose, regardless of the nature and characteristics of the applications. However, there are practical needs for improving the performance of TCP to suit particular types of traffic generated by different types of application. Unfortunately, all of these algorithms work well only when the nature of the traffic is consistent. However, in client/server applications, such as HTTP persistent connections that involve multiple request/response in a single TCP connection, these algorithms may not be able to function properly. We have proposed Cocktail approach to improve the overall performance of HTTP persistent connections. The changes only require modifications to a TCP sender, and a TCP with these changes is interoperable with any existing TCP implementation. Cocktail is composed of several elements. Each element is assigned to tackle a specific problem caused by the interactions between HTTP persistent connections and existing TCP implementations. A number of simulation experiments have been conducted to evaluate the performance of SSR, RBP and CWV against that of Cocktail. The results of the experiments show that Cocktail generally performs better than the others in a low RTT environment do. Nevertheless, RBP works best in a high RTT environment.