A web server's view of the transport layer

Abstract

This paper presents observations of traffic to and from a particular World-Wide Web server over the course a year and a half. This paper presents a longitudinal look at various network path properties, as well as the implementation status of various protocol options and mechanisms. In particular, this paper considers how World-Wide Web clients utilize TCP connections to transfer web data; the deployment of various TCP and HTTP options; the range of round-trip times observed in the network; packet sizes used for WWW transfers; the implications of the measured advertised window sizes; and the impact of using larger initial congestion window sizes. These properties/mechanisms and their implications are explored. An additional goal of this paper is to provide information to help researchers better simulate and emulate realistic networks.