The research described here is work in progress. It is funded in part
by Object Technologies International and by Eastman
Kodak Company, Rochester, N.Y.
Overview
For a good discussion of general Web server issues, such as design,
caching, and performance, read Web Server Technology: The Advanced
Guide for World Wide Web Information Providers, by Nancy
J. Yeager and Robert E. McGrath.
Describes a performance measurement tool, called Webmonitor,
and provides a detailed study of the performance of the Apache
Web server on a Pentium running Linux. Study done by the OCEANS
research group.
Sites which model the performance of Web servers. This is closely
related to benchmarking, in that models are used to predict how
a server will perform in particular situations.
Jeffrey Mogul describes a caching technique which exploits
spatial locality instead of temporal locality. These take the
form of hints provided by the Web server, which requires
protocol modifications.
ADAPTIVE provides an integrated environment for developing and
experimenting with flexible transport system architectures that
support lightweight and adaptive communication protocols for
diverse multimedia applications running on high-performance
networks.
Jeffrey Mogul describes a caching technique which exploits
spatial locality instead of temporal locality. These take the
form of hints provided by the Web server, which requires
protocol modifications.
A paper which attempts to model requests made to Web servers in
terms of both spatial and temporal locality, leveraging from
observations of self-similarity in Web traffic.
Speculation refers to a statistical technique, where the Web
server caches information about other pages likely to be
requested given the current request. In anticipation of these
future requests, the server may push the data to the client even
before the client requests it.
This paper compares and evaluates simulations of different
caching techniques based on traces collected from several Web
sites. It includes a case where an adaptive technique
outperformed all the other evaluated algorithms.
An implementation of a transparent Web server proxy. From
their Web page:
Cisco Systems' Cache Engine performs shared network caching of
Web content on the local network to eliminate repeated
transmission of identical content over wide-area network (WAN)
links.
Transparent load balancing hardware. From their Web page:
LocalDirector is a device that dynamically load-balances traffic
between multiple co-located servers to ensure timely access and
response to requests. It is independent of domain name servers
and applications; rather, it functions as a front end to a group
of servers, intelligently load balancing traffic demands between
servers and speeding user access to server-based
applications. Servers can be added and removed transparently,
but to end users LocalDirector provides the appearance of a
single, "virtual" server.
This paper jointly describes the Acceptor and Connector
patterns. The intent of these patterns is to decouple the active
and passive connection roles, respectively, from the tasks a
communication service performs once connections are established.
Describes the ADAPTIVE Service eXecutive (ASX) framework, an
object-oriented framework composed of automated tools and
reusable components to simplify the development, configuration,
and reconfiguration of applications in a distributed
environment.