CRII: NeTS: Optimizing Emerging Web Protocols for a Faster World Wide Web

该项目旨在优化新兴网络协议，以实现更快的万维网 (WWW)。 作为支持WWW的关键协议，超文本传输​​协议(HTTP)已经非常成功。它占整个互联网流量的一半以上。目前，部署最广泛的 HTTP 版本是 16 年前标准化的 HTTP/1.1。尽管如此，最近提出了几种新的网络协议（“NWP”），例如 HTTP/2、SPDY 和 QUIC，以克服 HTTP/1.1 的限制。特别是，HTTP 的下一版本 HTTP/2 已于 2015 年标准化并开始取代 HTTP/1.1。在可预见的将来，NWP 将变得普遍。鉴于这些 Web 协议的重要性，该项目的目标是了解它们，并提出有效的解决方案，通过利用它们的共同新功能来提高 Web 性能。具体来说，该项目确定了以前未探索过的数值天气预报的关键维度，并包括以下研究任务。 (1) 首席研究员（PI）将通过收集自愿参与者的网络流量来进行全面的用户研究，以了解 NWP 在“野外”的表现。测量结果不仅有助于提高当前数值天气预报的性能、能源效率和移动友好性，还为评估未来数值天气预报提供基准。 (2) PI 将研究如何战略性地利用服务器推送（许多 NWP 的一项新功能）来提高 Web 性能。服务器推送允许服务器抢先向客户端发送（推送）资源，从而克服了传统“请求-响应”资源获取范例的许多限制。 (3) PI 将研究如何通过同时利用多个接口（例如移动设备上的 Wi-Fi 和蜂窝网络）来优化 NWP 性能。新框架承诺仅在必要时才允许自适应地利用多路径，以减少移动设备的能耗和蜂窝数据使用。 (4) PI 还探索了改善 NWP 与传输控制协议 (TCP) 等底层传输层之间交互的机制。 更广泛的影响：由于网络协议在我们日常计算中的重要性，成功完成这项研究将使社会受益。众所周知，互联网用户对网页加载时间非常敏感。所提出的解决方案将改善网络用户的体验，并且可以将它们部署在浏览器和服务器应用程序上以立即产生效益。请注意，所提出的解决方案不依赖于特定的网络协议，因此可以产生长期效益。研究成果的传播将通过学术出版物、代码/数据分发、行业合作和标准化来完成。 PI 已将 HTTP/2 纳入他所教授的课程中，并将在本科生和研究生课程中纳入更多 NWP 材料。

This project seeks to optimize emerging web protocols for a faster world wide web (WWW). As the key protocol that supports WWW, the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) has been very successful. It accounts for more than half of the overall Internet traffic. Currently, the most widely deployed HTTP version is HTTP/1.1 standardized 16 years ago. Nonetheless, several new web protocols ("NWP") such as HTTP/2, SPDY, and QUIC have been proposed recently to overcome limitations of HTTP/1.1. In particular, HTTP/2, the next version of HTTP, has been standardized in 2015 and started replacing HTTP/1.1. NWP will become prevalent in the foreseeable future. Given the importance of these web protocols, the objective of this project is to understand them, and to propose effective solutions for improving web performance by leveraging their common new features. Specifically, this project identifies key dimensions of NWP that were not explored before, and includes the following research tasks. (1) The principal investigator (PI) will conduct a comprehensive user study by collecting web traffic from voluntary participants, to understand NWP's performance "in the wild". The measurement results not only shed light on improving the performance, energy efficiency, and mobile-friendliness of current NWP, but also provide benchmarks for evaluating future NWP. (2) The PI will investigate how to strategically leverage Server Push, a new feature of many NWP, to improve web performance. Server push allows a server to preemptively send (push) resources to the client, thus overcoming many limitations of the conventional "request-response" resource fetching paradigm. (3) The PI will study how to optimize NWP performance by simultaneously leveraging multiple interfaces (e.g., Wi-Fi and cellular on mobile devices). A new framework promises to allow multipath to be adaptively utilized only when necessary, in order to reduce the energy consumption and cellular data usage for mobile devices. (4) The PI also explores mechanisms for improving the interaction between NWP and the underlying transport layer such as the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP).Broader Impacts: Successful completion of this research will benefit the society, due to the importance of web protocols in our everyday computing. It is known that Internet users are very sensitive to web page load time. The proposed solutions will improve web users' experience, and they can be deployed on browser and server applications to yield immediate benefits. Note the proposed solutions do not rely on a specific web protocol, and can therefore yield long-term benefits. Dissemination of the research results will be done through academic publications, code/data distribution, industrial collaborations, and standardization. The PI has included HTTP/2 in the course he taught, and will incorporate more NWP materials into the undergraduate and graduate curriculum.