Session level techniques for improving web browsing performance on wireless links

Recent observations through experiments that we have performed in current third generation wireless networks have revealed that the achieved throughput over wireless links varies widely depending on the application. In particular, the throughput achieved by file transfer application (FTP) and web browsing application (HTTP) are quite different. The throughput achieved over a HTTP session is much lower than that achieved over an FTP session. The reason for the lower HTTP throughput is that the HTTP protocol is affected by the large Round-Trip Time (RTT) across Wireless links. HTTP transfers require multiple TCP connections and DNS lookups before a HTTP page can be displayed. Each TCP connection requires several RTTs to fully open the TCP send window and each DNS lookup requires several RTTs before resolving the domain name to IP mapping. These TCP/DNS RTTs significantly degrade the performance of HTTP over wireless links. To overcome these problems, we have developed session level opti...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: WWW
• Authors: Pablo Rodriguez, Sarit Mukherjee, Sampath Rangarajan
• Keywords: HTTP Download Mechanisms, HTTP Session, Internet Technology, Lower Http, WWW 2004