This high traffic problem will continue to plague the Internet
for the foreseeable feature, especially considering the emergence
of new multimedia traffic (video and audio). Thus, one important
consideration to the Web's current architects is how to reduce
network traffic. Approaches to reducing traffic includes removing it entirely
from the network and moving it from congested backbone networks
to higher speed local networks.
The other common complaint is poor user response time. Response
time is generally measured as the time between when a request
is issued and the response is received. It is closely related
to the time it takes to transfer a document. This metric is very
important to the user since it provides a measure on how long
it takes for a document to be received.
The most obvious way to improve Web performance is to obtain higher
bandwidth connections and faster routers. To get the improvement,
the upgrades must occur in many places. These are the connection
endpoints and all the intermediate networks. This is prohibitively
expensive to do on a worldwide scale. Another way to obtain
better Web performance is to reduce bandwidth consumption by intelligently
sending data only when absolutely necessary. This is the primary
solution that is discussed in this chapter.
There are three general intelligent bandwidth consumption methods to improve Web performance. These
are protocol modifications, document caching, and alternative
distribution methods. Protocol modifications have an immediate
impact on performance but may result in significant infrastructure
changes that users may not accept. Document caching is generally
transparent to the users and Web document designers and is under
active research. Alternative distribution schemes may help
alleviate the problem but does not hold the same potential as
the other methods.
Copyright © 1996 David C. Lee, All Rights Reserved
David C. Lee
<dlee@vt.edu>
Last modified: Mon Nov 18 15:22:36 EST 1996