Analyzing the Traffic Characteristics for Evaluating the Performance of Web Caching

Abstract

Web cache systems enhance Web services by reducing the client side latency. To deploy an effective Web cache, study about traffic characteristics is indispensable. Various reported results show the evidences of long range dependence (LRD) in the data stream and rank distribution of the documents in Web traffic. This chapter analyzes Web cache traffic properties such as LRD and rank distribution based on the traces collected from NLANR (National Laboratory of Applied Network Research) cache servers. Traces are processed to investigate the performance of Web cache servers and traffic patterns. Statistical tools are utilized to measure the strengths of the LRD and popularity. The Hurst parameter, which is a measure of the LRD is estimated using various statistical methods. It is observed that presence of LRD in the trace is feeble and has practically no influence on the Web cache performance.