Title page for ETD etd-011909-150148

Document Type thesis

Author Name Janc, Artur Adam

URN etd-011909-150148

Title Network Performance Evaluation within the Web Browser Sandbox

Degree MS

Department Computer Science

Advisors
Craig Wills, Advisor
Mark Claypool, Reader

Keywords
network measurement
Web browsers

Date of Presentation/Defense 2008-12-15

Availability unrestricted

Abstract
With the rising popularity of Web-based applications, the Web browser platform is becoming the dominant environment in which users interact with Internet content. We investigate methods of discovering information about network performance characteristics through the use of the Web browser, requiring only minimal user participation (navigating to a Web page). We focus on the analysis of explicit and implicit network operations performed by the browser (JavaScript XMLHTTPRequest and HTML DOM object loading) as well as by the Flash plug-in to evaluate network performance characteristics of a connecting client. We analyze the results of a performance study, focusing on the relative differences and similarities between download, upload and round-trip time results obtained in different browsers. We evaluate the accuracy of browser events indicating incoming data, comparing their timing to information obtained from the network layer. We also discuss alternative applications of the developed techniques, including measuring packet reception variability in a simulated streaming protocol. Our results confirm that browser-based measurements closely correspond to those obtained using standard tools in most scenarios. Our analysis of implicit communication mechanisms suggests that it is possible to make enhancements to existing “speedtest” services by allowing them to reliably determine download throughput and round-trip time to arbitrary Internet hosts. We conclude that browser-based measurement using techniques developed in this work can be an important component of network performance studies.

Files
artur-janc-msc-thesis.pdf

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Document Type	thesis
Author Name	Janc, Artur Adam
URN	etd-011909-150148
Title	Network Performance Evaluation within the Web Browser Sandbox
Degree	MS
Department	Computer Science
Advisors	Craig Wills, Advisor Mark Claypool, Reader
Keywords	network measurement Web browsers
Date of Presentation/Defense	2008-12-15
Availability	unrestricted
Abstract With the rising popularity of Web-based applications, the Web browser platform is becoming the dominant environment in which users interact with Internet content. We investigate methods of discovering information about network performance characteristics through the use of the Web browser, requiring only minimal user participation (navigating to a Web page). We focus on the analysis of explicit and implicit network operations performed by the browser (JavaScript XMLHTTPRequest and HTML DOM object loading) as well as by the Flash plug-in to evaluate network performance characteristics of a connecting client. We analyze the results of a performance study, focusing on the relative differences and similarities between download, upload and round-trip time results obtained in different browsers. We evaluate the accuracy of browser events indicating incoming data, comparing their timing to information obtained from the network layer. We also discuss alternative applications of the developed techniques, including measuring packet reception variability in a simulated streaming protocol. Our results confirm that browser-based measurements closely correspond to those obtained using standard tools in most scenarios. Our analysis of implicit communication mechanisms suggests that it is possible to make enhancements to existing “speedtest” services by allowing them to reliably determine download throughput and round-trip time to arbitrary Internet hosts. We conclude that browser-based measurement using techniques developed in this work can be an important component of network performance studies.
Files	artur-janc-msc-thesis.pdf