Measuring Websites from a Global Perspective

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master_Boye_Magnus_2014.pdf (7.38 MB)

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Sähkötekniikan korkeakoulu | Master's thesis
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Date

2014-02-10

Department

Major/Subject

Networking Technology

Mcode

S3029

Degree programme

TLT - Tietoliikennetekniikka

Language

en

Pages

4 + 86

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Abstract

Since the invention of the World Wide Web the content and services provided on the web have changed significantly. In search of cost savings governments and businesses push online services, and the web has therefore become ever more important to many people. It is therefore important to understand the performance of web page delivery, in order to improve the user experience of the web. The goal of this Master's thesis is to evaluate the network performance of web page delivery in relation to content distribution networks.We use the global measurement platform PlanetLab to perform active measurements of the performance of DNS and HTTP when downloading web pages. Domain names are resolved using iterative resolution, Google DNS, OpenDNS, and the default DNS server of measurement nodes. This enables us to asses how the choice of DNS resolver affects CDN server selection. The measurements reveal that network latency has the greatest impact on DNS resolution time and that nearby DNS servers will generally have the lowest resolution time. We developed an effective method of identifying CDNs and applied it to the measurement data. We analyze the accuracy of the DNS resolvers and determine that the use of a recursive DNS server close to the end-user typically results in server selections more similar to the optimal server selection of a CDN. However, we did not establish a relationship between resolver accuracy and HTTP performance. Finally, we compare the throughput of CDNs and observe that CDNs are likely optimized for different file sizes.

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Supervisor

Ott, Jörg

Thesis advisor

Sarolahti, Pasi

Keywords

Active measurements, DNS, HTTP, CDN, Websites

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https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:aalto-201403061524

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[dipl] Sähkötekniikan korkeakoulu / ELEC