Measurement Approaches to Evaluate Performance Optimizations for Wide-Area Wireless Networks

We present measurement approaches to evaluate performance optimizations, employed at different layers of the protocol stack, to enhance application performance over wide-area wireless networks (WWANs). Applications running over WWAN cellular environments (e.g web browsing) are significantly affected by the vagaries of the cellular wireless links. Much of the prior research has focussed on variety of isolated performance optimizations and their measurements over wired and wireless environments. In this paper we introduce experiment-based measurement approaches to benchmark application performance using optimizations performed at individual layers of the protocol stack. These measurement initiatives are aimed at: (1) performing an accurate benchmark of application performance over commercially deployed WWAN environments, (2) characterizing the impact of a wide selection of optimization techniques applied at different layers of the protocol stack, and (3) quantifying the interdependencies between the different optimization techniques and providing measurement initiatives for future experimentation to obtain consistent and repeatable application benchmarks in WWAN environments.