Patent ID: 7024477

Claim:
A method for service time analysis in a computer network, comprising the steps of: receiving a request from a network client machine for an electronic document and recording an initial time value for the request; forwarding the request to an origin server and receiving a response stream containing the electronic document from the origin server; sending the response stream to the client machine, wherein the response stream is instrumented to contain the initial time value; receiving at least one uniform resource identifier (URI) request from the client machine, wherein each received URI request is for a resource embedded within the electronic document; creating a data structure that contains key/service time value pairs, wherein each pair is associated with one of said URI requests, and each key is an identifier present in its associated URI request; forwarding each URI request to the origin server, and receiving a corresponding URI response from the origin server; updating each of the service time values in said data structure, to indicate the time value for completing the response to each of said URI requests; sending each URI response to the client machine; and using said keys and updated service time values from said data structure to compute the total time required to respond to all of said requests associated with said electronic document, including all of said URI requests, wherein the steps are performed by multiple reverse proxy servers, wherein a selected one of said reverse proxy servers acts as the controlling quality-of-service monitor, and the remaining reverse proxy servers are subordinate servers to the controlling monitor.