Performance of Web servers in a distributed computing environment

Abstract

Over the past few years the applicability of Web technology has evolved from standard document retrieval functionality to the ability to provide end-user interfaces in distributed computing environments. Consequently, Web technology is becoming an integral part of the IT infrastructure of service providers, which raises the need to be able to predict and understand the performance capabilities and limitations of Web servers in a distributed computing environment. In this paper, we propose an end-to-end performance model for Web servers engaged in object-oriented distributed computing, including the impact of new features that have not been included in performance models of Web servers before: the object scope, threading model and location . We have implemented the model in a simulation tool. The performance predictions based on the model are shown to match very well with the performance of Web servers measured in a test lab environment.