Performance Interactions Between P-HTTP and
TCP Implementations
John Heidemann
USC/Information Sciences Institute
Citation
John Heidemann. Performance Interactions Between P-HTTP and TCP Implementations. ACM Computer Communication Review. 27, 2 (Apr. 1997), 65–73. [PDF] [alt PDF]
Abstract
This document describes several performance problems resulting from interactions between implementations of persistent-HTTP (P-HTTP) and TCP. Two of these problems tie P-HTTP performance to TCP delayed-acknowledgments, thus adding up to 200ms to each P-HTTP transaction. A third results in multiple slow-starts per TCP connection. Unresolved, these problems result in P-HTTP transactions which are 14 times slower than standard HTTP and 20 times slower than potential P-HTTP over a 10 Mb/s Ethernet. We describe each problem and potential solutions. After implementing our solutions to two of the problems, we observe that P-HTTP performs better than HTTP on a local Ethernet. Although we observed these problems in specific implementations of HTTP and TCP (Apache-1.1b4 and SunOS 4.1.3, respectively), we believe that these problems occur more widely.Bibtex Citation
@article{Heidemann97a,
author = {Heidemann, John},
title = {Performance Interactions Between {P-HTTP} and
{TCP} Implementations},
journal = {ACM Computer Communication Review},
year = {1997},
sortdate = {1997-04-01},
project = {ant, lsam},
jsubject = {www},
volume = {27},
number = {2},
month = apr,
pages = {65--73},
xnote = {Draft versions were available in 1996 as [Heidemann96b]},
jlocation = {johnh: folder: lsam},
keywords = {http, apache, bsd-tcp, nagle's algorithm},
url = {https://ant.isi.edu/%7ejohnh/PAPERS/Heidemann97a.html},
psurl = {https://ant.isi.edu/%7ejohnh/PAPERS/Heidemann97a.ps.gz},
pdfurl = {https://ant.isi.edu/%7ejohnh/PAPERS/Heidemann97a.pdf},
htmlurl = {https://ant.isi.edu/lsam/publications/phttp_tcp_interactions/},
myorganization = {USC/Information Sciences Institute},
copyrightholder = {authors}
}