WebAccel: Accelerating Web access for low-bandwidth hosts
Current popular Web browsers simply fetch the entire Web page from the server in a greedy fashion. This simple Web-fetching mechanism employed by browsers is inappropriate for use in low-bandwidth networks since they unnecessarily cause large response time for users. In this paper, we first analyze the reasons that cause large response time by considering several factors, including the properties of typical Web pages and browsers, the interaction between the HTTP and TCP protocols, and the impact of server-side optimization techniques. We then propose a new Web-acceleration solution called WebAccel, which consists of three easy-to-deploy browser-side optimization mechanisms to reduce the user response time. Through ns2 simulations and a prototype implementation, we compare the performance of our solution with that of current browsers and show that WebAccel brings significant performance benefits in terms of user-perceived response time.
web performance network services and applications