How HTTP/2 pushes the web: An empirical study of HTTP/2 server push

Zimmermann, Torsten; Rüth, Jan; Wolters, Benedikt; Hohlfeld, Oliver

doi:10.23919/ifipnetworking.2017.8264830

Cited by 28 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…We are unable to confirm their findings with our measurements. The most recent related work [31] loads pages over a high speed link and concludes that 51% of the tested pages are ≥ 5% faster over h2 when compared to h1s, which is also contradictory to our realistic test case results. There is very similar performance under Good network conditions, but h2 clearly suffers from Poor conditions.…”

Section: Resultscontrasting

confidence: 99%

“…The discussed aspects and challenges make Server Push difficult to fine-tune to achieve optimal performance. Due to this and the fact that many popular h2 server implementations do not yet support Server Push, Zimmerman et al [31] found that out of their observed 5.38 million HTTP/2 enabled domains, only 595 actively used Server Push.…”

Section: Experimental Evaluationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Web Performance Characteristics of HTTP/2 and Comparison to HTTP/1.1

Marx

Wijnants

Quax

et al. 2018

Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing

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Abstract. The HTTP/1.1 protocol has long been a staple on the web, for both pages and apps. However, it has started to show its age, especially with regard to page load performance and the overhead it entails due to its use of multiple underlying connections. Its successor, the newly standardized HTTP/2, aims to improve the protocol's performance and reduce its overhead by (1) multiplexing multiple resources over a single TCP connection, (2) by using advanced prioritization strategies and by introducing new features such as (3) Server Push and (4) HPACK header compression. This work provides an in-depth overview of these four HTTP/2 performance aspects, discussing both synthetic and realistic experiments, to determine the gains HTTP/2 can provide in comparison to HTTP/1.1 in various settings. We find that the single multiplexed connection can actually become a significant performance bottleneck in poor network conditions with high packet loss and that HTTP/2 rarely improves much on HTTP/1.1, except in terms of reduced overhead. Prioritization strategies, Server Push and HPACK compression are found to have a relatively limited impact on web performance, but together with other observed HTTP/2 performance problems this could also be due to faulty current implementations, of which we have discovered various examples.

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Section: Resultscontrasting

confidence: 99%

Section: Experimental Evaluationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Web Performance Characteristics of HTTP/2 and Comparison to HTTP/1.1

Marx

Wijnants

Quax

et al. 2018

Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing

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“…Server Push. In previous work [39], we complement the view on H2's adoption provided in [35] and target broader sets, i.e., IPv4 scans and all .com/.net/.org domains, and Server Push explicitly. While the adoption of H2 and Server Push is rising, the latter is orders of magnitude lower (cf.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although assessing the performance of Server Push in real-world deployments [23,26,35,39] is crucial, it imposes practical challenges. Among other factors, websites i) can change due to dynamic thirdparty content, e.g., ads [16], or ii) are subject to varying network characteristics.…”

Section: Replaying Push Websitesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…1) [35,39]-potentially given its complex usage. In previous studies, we showed that Server Push can be easily used suboptimally in real-world deployments and hurt instead of improving performance [39,40]. These findings, as well as discussions among web and protocol engineers [7,23,26,28], highlight that the quest for optimal Server Push usage is far from being settled.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Is the web ready for HTTP/2 server push?

Zimmermann

Wolters

Hohlfeld

et al. 2018

Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Emerging Networking EXperiments and Technologies

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HTTP/2 supersedes HTTP/1.1 to tackle the performance challenges of the modern Web. A highly anticipated feature is Server Push, enabling servers to send data without explicit client requests, thus potentially saving time. Although guidelines on how to use Server Push emerged, measurements have shown that it can easily be used in a suboptimal way and hurt instead of improving performance. We thus tackle the question if the current Web can make better use of Server Push. First, we enable real-world websites to be replayed in a testbed to study the effects of different Server Push strategies. Using this, we next revisit proposed guidelines to grasp their performance impact. Finally, based on our results, we propose a novel strategy using an alternative server scheduler that enables to interleave resources. This improves the visual progress for some websites, with minor modifications to the deployment. Still, our results highlight the limits of Server Push: a deep understanding of web engineering is required to make optimal use of it, and not every site will benefit.

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Measuring Web Quality of Experience in Cellular Networks

Asrese

Walelgne

Bajpai

et al. 2019

Passive and Active Measurement

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I am immensely thankful to my families and relatives for their unconditional love and support through my school life. Last but not least, I would like to thank my better half, Ichalem, for her love and everything else. This thesis is dedicated to my mother Tena Yihunie -who is my role model of perseverance and confidence -and Adisualem -youngest brother, who was born three weeks after this research was started.

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How HTTP/2 pushes the web: An empirical study of HTTP/2 server push

Cited by 28 publications

References 13 publications

Web Performance Characteristics of HTTP/2 and Comparison to HTTP/1.1

Web Performance Characteristics of HTTP/2 and Comparison to HTTP/1.1

Is the web ready for HTTP/2 server push?

Measuring Web Quality of Experience in Cellular Networks

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