Computer Communications

Networks
Lecture 5

Power point slides made with the help from the slides
came with the computer networking book written by Kurose
 Web page
• Web page consists of objects, each of which can be stored
on different Web servers
• Object can be HTML file, JPEG image, video clip
• Web page consists of base HTML file which includes several
referenced objects, each addressable by a URL
• Each URL has two components
a) The hostname of the server that houses the object
b) The object’s path name
 HTTP Overview
• HTTP: HyperText Transfer Protocol
(RFC 1945 (old version), RFC 7230, RFC 7540)
• Web’s application layer protocol
• Client/Server model:
a) Client: browser that requests, receives,
(using HTTP protocol) and displays Web
objects
b) Server: Web server sends (using HTTP
protocol) objects in response to
requests. Ex: Apache,
Microsoft’s web server
 HTTP Overview

PC running
Firefox browser

server running
Apache Web
server

iPhone running
Safari browser
 HTTP uses TCP
• Client initiates TCP connection (creates socket) to
server, port 80
• Server accepts TCP connection from client
• HTTP messages exchanged between browser and
web server
• TCP connection closed
 HTTP Overview
• HTTP is “stateless”
- Server maintains no information about past client
requests
- It simplifies the server design
 HTTP Connections: 2 types
1) Non-persistent HTTP
a) TCP connection opened
b) at most one object sent over TCP connection
c) TCP connection closed
* downloading multiple objects requires
multiple connections
2) Persistent HTTP
a)TCP connection opened to a server
b) multiple objects can be sent over single TCP
connection between client and server
c) TCP connection closed
Non-persistent HTTP: example
Non-persistent HTTP: example
 Non-persistent HTTP: response time
• RTT – Round-trip time: Time for a small packet to travel from client to
server and back
• HTTP response time (per object):
a) One RTT to initiate TCP connection
b) One RTT for HTTP request and first
few bytes of HTTP response to return
c) object/ file transmission time

* Non-persistent HTTP response time

= 2RTT + file transmission time
Issues with Non-persistent HTTP
• Requires 2 RTT per object
• Significant burden on web server
• Browsers often open multiple parallel connections
to fetch referenced objects in parallel
 Persistent HTTP (HTTP 1.1)
• Server leaves connection open after sending response
• An entire Web page can be sent over a single persistent
TCP connection
• Multiple Web pages residing on the same server can be
sent to the client over a single persistent TCP
connection
• Requests for objects can be made back-to-back without
waiting for replies to pending requests
• The HTTP server closes a connection when it isn’t used
for a certain time
• As little as one RTT for all the referenced objects
 HTTP request message
• Two types of HTTP messages: request, response
• HTTP request message:
- ASCII (human readable format)
• Typical HTTP request message: Request line + Header lines
Request line GET /somedir/page.html HTTP/1.1 (method + URL + HTTP version)
Host: www.someschool.edu (the host on which the object resides)
Header lines Connection: close (close the connection after sending the requested object)
User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (client browser type)
Accept-language: fr (user prefers to receive French version of the object)
• The method field can take several values like GET, POST, HEAD, PUT, DELETE
HTTP request message: general format

* sp: space, cr: carriage return character, lf: line feed character
 HTTP Response Message
• Typical HTTP response message: status line + header lines + entity body
HTTP/1.1 200 OK (Status line: server HTTP version Status code)
Connection: close (telling the client it is closing the TCP connection)
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 2015 15:44:04 GMT (time and date when the HTTP
response was created)
Header lines

Server: Apache/2.2.3 (centOS) (The message is generated by Apache

Web server)
Last-Modified: Tue, 18 Aug 2015 15:11:03 GMT (time and date when the
object was last created or modified)
Content-Length: 6821 (number of bytes in the object being sent)
Content-Type: text/html (object in the entity body is HTML text)
data data … (Entity body: contains the requested object)
 HTTP response status code
• Status code appears in the 1st line in server-to-client response message
• Some sample codes:
200 OK:
request succeeded, requested object later in this msg
301 Moved Permanently:
requested object moved, new location specified later in this message
(in location field)
304 Not Modified:
tells the client that the response has not been modified. So the client can use the
current version
400 Bad Request:
request msg not understood by server
404 Not Found:
requested document not found on this server
505 HTTP Version Not Supported:
The requested HTTP protocol version is not supported by the server
 User-Server Interaction: Cookies
• Allows Web sites to identify and keep track of users
- Amazon uses cookies to provide its shopping cart service
- Netflix uses cookies to keep track of our viewing history
• When initial HTTP request arrives at site from a new user,
site creates:
- unique ID for the user (aka “cookie”)
- entry in the backend database for ID
• Subsequent HTTP requests from the same user to this site
will contain cookie ID value, allowing site to “identify” the
user
User-Server Interaction: Cookies
Four components of cookie technology
1. HTTP response message: set-cookie ---
2. HTTP request message: cookie: ----
3. Cookie file kept on the user’s end system
4. Back-end database at Web site
 HTTP cookies: comments
What cookies can be used
for:
▪ authorization
cookies and privacy:
▪ shopping carts ▪ cookies permit sites to
▪ recommendations learn a lot about you on
▪ user session state (Web e-mail) their site.
▪ third party persistent
cookies (tracking cookies)
allow common identity
(cookie value) to be
tracked across multiple
web sites
 Web Caches
• Aka proxy server
• Goal: Satisfy client request without involving origin
Web server
• The Web cache has its own disk storage and keeps
copies of recently requested objects
• User’s browser can be configured so that all of the
user’s HTTP requests are first directed to the Web
cache
 Web Caches
• Browser sends all HTTP requests to cache
- if object in cache: cache returns object to client
- else cache requests object from origin server, caches
received object, then return object to the client
 Web Caches
• Web cache acts as both client and server
- server for original requesting client
- client to origin server
• Typically a Web cache is purchased and installed by
an ISP
Why Web Caching?
• Reduce response time for client request
- cache is closer to client
• Reduce traffic on an institution’s access link
 Caching example
Scenario:
• Access link rate: 1.54 Mbps
• RTT from institutional router to server: 2 sec
• Web object size: 100 k bits
• Average request rate from browsers to origin servers:
15/sec
- avg data rate to browsers: 1.50 Mbps
Performance:
• Access link utilization or traffic intensity = 0.97
• LAN utilization = 0.0015
• End-end delay = Internet delay +
access link delay +
LAN delay
= 2 sec + minutes + μsec
 Caching example
• Access link delay is very long origin
servers
• Option 1: public
Internet
buy a faster access link (expensive)
• Option 2:
1.54 Mbps
install a web cache (cheap!) access link

institutional
network
1 Gbps LAN

local web cache

 Performance with Cache
Suppose cache hit rate is 0.4:
• 40% requests served by cache, with low delay
• 60% requests satisfied at origin
- rate to browsers over access link = 0.6*1.5 Mbps
= 0.9 Mbps
- access link utilization = 0.9/1.54 = 0.58 means
low queueing delay at access link
• Average end-end delay:
= 0.6*(delay from origin servers) + 0.4*(delay when
satisfied at cache)
= 0.6(2.01) + 0.4(~msecs) = ~1.2 secs
 Conditional GET
• The copy of the object in the cache might not be up to date