Di erentiated Control of Web TraÆc : A Numerical Analysis

Internet measurements show that the size distribution of Web-based transactions is usually very skewed; a few large requests constitute most of the total traÆc. Motivated by the advantages of scheduling algorithms which favor short jobs, we propose to perform di erentiated control over Web-based transactions to give preferential service to short web requests. The control is realized through service semantics provided by Internet TraÆc Managers, a Di serv-like architecture. To evaluate the performance of such a control system, it is necessary to have a fast but accurate analytical method. To this end, we model the Internet as a time-shared system and propose a numerical approach which utilizes Kleinrock's conservation law to solve the model. The numerical results are shown to match well those obtained by packet-level simulation, which runs orders of magnitude slower than our numerical method.