Towards an automated client-side framework for evaluating HTTP/TCP performance

Many different existing technologies and techniques have been developed to accelerate Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) with the aim of improving the end-user´s web browsing experience. However, there is no standard methodology for evaluating HTTP performance or for the evaluation of a given HTTP acceleration technology in a multi-user scenario. In this paper we present a framework HTTP-AE (HTTP Automated Evaluation) for measuring the end-user´s web browsing quality of experience. We describe how HTTP-AE can be used to automate the evaluation of HTTP performance and for the evaluation of HTTP acceleration technologies in multi-user environments. We present three case studies in which we evaluate three different HTTP acceleration technologies for satellite systems using HTTP-AE. In our first two case studies we show that typical browser HTTP acceleration techniques operate sub-optimally on satellite systems. In our third case study we show that in multi-user scenarios, HTTP acceleration technologies, which break the end-to-end semantics of HTTP, can distribute network resources unfairly to the end-users.