Extending HTTP Models to Web 2.0 Applications: The Case of Social Networks

Owing to an explosive growth, Web 2.0 technologies are now widespread. Moreover, they have been increasingly mixed with the cloud model to produce highly sophisticated services, also with an increased social flavor. In this perspective, Social Networks (SNs) are a paradigmatic example, allowing to share user-generated contents, while assuring a high degree of interactivity. Such facets introduce new usage patterns reflecting in new features in the produced HTTP traffic. Therefore, additional modeling is needed, since standard HTTP behaviors could not easily capture new trends. This paper introduces an extension to standard HTTP behavioral models, by considering new elements generated by SN applications. To prove the correctness of the proposed approach, a traffic characterization of one of the most popular SN is presented.