A workload characterization methodology for WWW applications

With the World Wide Web (WWW) traffic being the fastest growing portion of load on the internet, describing and characterizing this workload is a central issue for any performance evaluation study. In this paper, we present an approach for generating a profile of requests submitted to a WWW server (GET, POST, ...) which takes explicitly into account the user behavior when surfing the WWW (i.e. navigating through it via a WWW browser). We present Probabilistic Attributed Context Free Grammar (PACFG) as a model for translating from this user oriented view of the workload (namely the conversations made within browser windows) to the methods submitted to the Web servers (respectively to a proxy server). The characterization at this lower level are essential for estimating the traffic on the net and are thus the starting point for evaluations of net traffic.

[1]  Günter Haring,et al.  Generative networkload models for a single server environment , 1994, SIGMETRICS.

[2]  Mark Crovella,et al.  Characteristics of WWW Client-based Traces , 1995 .

[3]  Peter C. Chapin.  Formal languages I , 1973, CSC '73.

[4]  Carey Williamson,et al.  A Synthetic Workload Model for Internet Mosaic Traffic , 1995 .

[5]  Umeshwar Dayal,et al.  From User Access Patterns to Dynamic Hypertext Linking , 1996, Comput. Networks.

[6]  Kimberly C. Claffy,et al.  Web Traffic Characterization: An Assesment of the Impact of Caching Documents from NCSA's Web Server , 1995, Comput. Networks ISDN Syst..

[7]  Günter Haring,et al.  Hierarchical Approach to Building Generative Networkload Models , 1995, Comput. Networks ISDN Syst..

[8]  Mark Crovella,et al.  Self-Similarity in World Wide Web Traffic: Evidence and Causes , 1996, SIGMETRICS.

[9]  Arto Salomaa,et al.  Formal languages , 1973, Computer science classics.

[10]  Larry L. Peterson,et al.  Experiences with network simulation , 1996, SIGMETRICS '96.

[11]  Martin F. Arlitt,et al.  Web server workload characterization: the search for invariants , 1996, SIGMETRICS '96.

[12]  Virgílio A. F. Almeida,et al.  Characterizing reference locality in the WWW , 1996, Fourth International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Information Systems.

[13]  Michael G. Thomason,et al.  Syntactic Methods in Pattern Recognition , 1982 .

[14]  James E. Pitkow,et al.  Characterizing Browsing Strategies in the World-Wide Web , 1995, Comput. Networks ISDN Syst..

[15]  Satish K. Tripathi,et al.  Synchronization Representation and Traffic Source Modeling in Orchestrated Presentation , 1996, IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun..