Performance Analysis In the Age of the Internet: A New Paradigm for a New Era

IP application performance must frequently be assessed using empirical methods that combine performance testing and modeling. We have developed an approach to identifying bottlenecks using performance signatures. A performance signature is a set of characteristic and repeatable behaviors (e.g., response time, resource utilization or throughput vs. some measure of load) that arise from specific performance tests. By systematically looking for signatures, scalability bottlenecks can be identified more readily than in the past. We summarize our experiences with performance signatures that have arisen out of multiple Internet application performance studies. The original objectives of those studies were to characterize the capacity and response times of different applications. However we found that we first needed to perform bottleneck and scalability analyses to identify latent problems and opportunities for major improvement. We provide a number of performance signatures that have been encountered in real Internet applications.