We13 Latency Reduction via Client-side Piwfetching

The rapid growth of the WWW has inspired numerous techniques to reduce web latency. While some of these techniques have not been implemented because they either increase network rru$ic or require coaperation between tiers. recent studies cast a shndow on techniques already in use (e.g. proxy cachingl as U result of the increasingly dynamic aspects of the WWW. Znparticular, the prol$erration of dynamically generated web pages (ie. cgi, ASP), which are either linked to a dahbase, or extract information from cookies. reduces the efectiveness of cucheing techniques. Most techniques attempt to improve on part of the overnll latency, and ojen neglecf io address the internal latency, which can Be a serious bottleneck in heterogeneous environments. We propose a client-side prefetching mechunism, where the decision of what to prefetch is leJ to the user. We found it has the potential of reducing latency by up to 81% in a homogeneous environment and 63% in a heterogeneous environment. In data taken on the client, the technique depicted the potential 10 decrease iotency by ihree-fold Client-side prefetching does nor increase network mafic, it attempt lo improve on all parts of latency, and it can be implemented on the client side, wilhowt the cooperation uf any other tier. Moreover. it can work seumlessiy with any other Iutency reduction technique. We advocate ihe inclusion of a suiiuble mechanism in fiture web browsers to support client-side