Internet DRAFT - draft-mccall-httpbis-timing-measurements

draft-mccall-httpbis-timing-measurements






Network Working Group                                          M. McCall
Internet-Draft                                                    Akamai
Intended status: Standards Track                           June 16, 2012
Expires: December 18, 2012


   HTTP Extension to provide timing data for performance measurement
              draft-mccall-httpbis-timing-measurements-00

Abstract

   This memo presents a method for allowing an HTTP server to gather
   relevant performace data from compliant user-agents.  Though the HTML
   5 standard supplies Nav-Timings there is no standard way for that
   data to be communicated back to an origin.  The intention of this
   document is to describe a method in which that can be done cleanly
   and scalably.

Status of this Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
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   This Internet-Draft will expire on December 18, 2012.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2012 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
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   include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as



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   described in the Simplified BSD License.


Table of Contents

   1.  Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  3
   2.  Supported Client Measurements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
   3.  Delivering Measurement Data  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
   4.  Illustrative Use Case  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
   5.  Proposed HTTP protocol extension . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
   6.  Security Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
   7.  IANA Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
   8.  Closing Thoughts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
   9.  References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
     9.1.  Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
     9.2.  Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
   Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14


































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1.  Overview

   One of the primary goals of the HTTP 2.0 is to improve performance of
   web pages.  While there have been many performance improvements in
   the entire web stack since the first iteration of HTTP - from server,
   to network, to browser - there are now important efforts being made
   to improve the protocol which delivers much of the world's content
   every day.  Indeed, it's no surprise that having a faster website has
   shown to improve customer conversion rates and user engagement, and
   with richer websites becoming more prevalent, improving performance
   is a natural next step in the evolution of the protocol.  While there
   are many different proposals on how best to speed up HTTP, this
   document focuses on quantifying the performance of an HTTP session.

   In its current state, HTTP has no means to expose performance metrics
   for an HTTP session.  Because of this, today, most web page
   performance measurement is done one of two ways:

      Synthetic transactions

      Real-user Measurement

   Synthetic transactions tend to rely on a instrumented browser that
   has the ability measure DNS resolution time, first byte time, object
   download time, DOM processing time, and other browser events.  There
   are many synthetic transaction options currently available, ranging
   from 3rd-party solutions provided by companies like Keynote [Keynote]
   and Gomez [Gomez] , to open-source projects like WebPageTest [WPT] .
   While these solutions are valuable, they do have limitations.  In
   particular, most these measurements are performed in controlled,
   "clean room" environment.  These "clean rooms" often have better-
   performing networks, browsers, and computers than a real user might
   have, and thus, tend to provide a best-case measurement of a site's
   performance.

   Real-user measurement is normally performed by instrumenting the
   target webpage with JavaScript to capture measurements similar to
   those available in synthetic transactions.  Recently, the W3C has
   submitted a few specification drafts [Nav-Timing] which provide an
   interface for browsers to expose performance timing data, and most
   modern browsers support the Navigation Timing interface.  While the
   measurements available using browser-side RUM are extremely valuable
   in quantifying an end-user experience, this solution also comes with
   limitations.  In particular, running JavaScript on the client does
   not come without some performance impact.  In addition, instrumenting
   the webpage with timing measurements can potentially be non-trivial
   and add to development time for web page designers.




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   This document outlines an alternative to both synthetic measurements
   and real-user measurements in their current forms by adding new
   request and response headers to the HTTP protocol.  By coupling
   client-side metrics into the HTTP session, end-user web page
   performance can be easily quantified without the need and overhead of
   JavaScript running in the client's browser, and without having to
   rely on third parties to provide performance data.  Additionally,
   since the server is privy to the performance of the session, it is
   possible for it to modify the content delivered accordingly.

   At a high level, the HTTP Timing Measures Extension would work in a
   manner similar to the following:

      A new client request header, X-Accept-Measurement, is sent at the
      initiation of an HTTP request.

      A negotiation takes place between the server and the client to
      determine which measurements will be sent by the client and a
      timing interval for the measurements.  The server requests
      measurements by sending an X-Send-Measurement response header.

      Assuming the negotiation is successful, the client sends
      measurements after the timing interval has expired to the server
      in an HTTP POST request with an X-Timing-Measures header.

   We believe that adding this functionality to HTTP is important for a
   variety of reasons.  CDNs, in particular, compete through performance
   attributes.  However, there are a number of issues that make showing
   value through performance data difficult: Web site owners tend to be
   hesitant to add new JavaScript to their sites out of fear of slowing
   the site down, and synthetic measurements don't truly show what real
   users are experiencing.  Even if a CDN were to transparently insert
   measurement code into a web page, there are risks involved.  By
   adding measurements directly into HTTP, the playing field is leveled
   by having the protocol itself provide the de-facto method of
   measuring web site performance.















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2.  Supported Client Measurements

   The W3C spec for Navigation Timing provides an excellent interface
   for collecting base page metrics.  However, it is limited to network
   and browser events, and in those cases only for the base page as it
   is served.  AJAX-initiated events and object timings are not exposed.
   The draft W3C spec for Resource Timing goes further, but to date has
   no browser support.

   In addition to the base measurements outlined in Navigation Timing,
   the client should optionally support providing measurements for all
   resources required to render the page within the timing interval
   specified by the server.  Having this level of measurement
   granularity would allow one to collect measurements for objects that
   are delivered outside of the base page measurement, and be useful in
   illustrating end user experience.

   At a minimum, clients should support the measurements outlined in the
   Navigation Timing spec.  Supporting other resource timings should be
   optional, since it could conceivably generate a large number of
   performance metrics to be sent back to the server.






























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3.  Delivering Measurement Data

   Once the client and server have negotiated the collection of the
   measurements, data should be sent back to the collecting server via
   an empty HTTP POST request, and encapsulated in an X-Timing-Measures
   header.

   However, there may be a case in which the amount of data to be sent
   back to the server is too much to encapsulate in an HTTP header.  An
   HTTP POST also may not be desirable in cases when POSTs interfere
   with application logic.  In this case, an optional HTTP header,
   X-Timing-Measures-Collector can be specified in the initial response
   to indicate to the client where to send the data.  If the X-Timing-
   Measures-Collector header exists, data will be sent in the body of
   the POST request, in the format previously described.

   In some cases, it may be necessary to specify a Timing Measures
   Collector on a per-page basis, in which case an optional meta element
   can be added to an HTML page.  Such a meta element might look like:

   <meta http-equiv="Timing-Measures-Collector"
   content="http://www.example.com/beacon.htm">

   By default, the X-Timing-Measures-Collector attribute is null, and
   data is POSTed back to the page as described earlier.


























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4.  Illustrative Use Case

   This use case demonstrates a successful performance measurement
   negotiation and data posting.  In it, we show how a user agent and
   site (www.example.com) would negotiate and transfer measurement data.

   Request1:
   UA --> Server (www.example.com)

   GET /index.html HTTP/2.0
   Host: www.example.com
   X-Accept-Measurement: allowed
   Response1:
   Server (www.example.com) --> UA

   HTTP/2.0 200 OK
   X-Send-Measurement:
       dns;firstByte;domReady;domLoaded;onLoad;resources:TI:300000

   We see that the first UA request has indicated that it is willing to
   provide HTTP performance measurements (X-Accept-Measurement:
   allowed), and that the server has replied with the measurements it is
   requesting (X-Send-Measurement:
   dns;firstByte;domReady;domLoaded;onLoad;resources:TI:300000).  The
   X-Send-Measurement response header sent by the server is followed
   with a semicolon-delimited list of desired measurements, followed by
   'TI', which is the timing interval of the desired measurement data
   expressed as milliseconds.

   Request2:
   UA --> Server (www.example.com)

   POST /index.html HTTP/2.0
   Host: www.example.com
   X-Timing-Measures:
       dns:23;firstByte:120;domReady:1200;
       domLoaded:1300;onLoad:1331;resources:1400

   Response2:
   Server (www.example.com) --> UA

   HTTP/2.0 200 OK

   We now see the UA sending back data to the initial server via an
   empty HTTP POST request, including the X-Timing-Measures header
   containing measurements that happened in the timing interval
   requested by the server in the initial handshake.  The header
   contains key-value pairs of the requested measurements, where the



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   values are represented as milliseconds of the measurement's duration.
   Depending on which measurements are supported by the browser, all or
   some of the measurements requested by the server are returned.
















































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5.  Proposed HTTP protocol extension

   To implement Timing Measures, additions of new HTTP headers are
   required.  The details of the request and response headers are
   included as an initial starting point for discussions, rather than as
   a final proposal.

   Pseudo-BNF grammar for these headers might look like:

X-Accept-Measurement        = "Accept-Measurement:" measure-resp
measure-resp                = "accept|not-accepted"

X-Send-Measurement          = "Send-Measurement:" measure-type:TI
measure-type                = measurement
TI                          = timing-interval

X-Timing-Measures           = "Timing-Measures:" measure-type:value
measure-type                = measurement
value                       = value

X-Timing-Measures-Collector = "Timing-Measures-Collector:" collector-url
collector-url               = collector

   The Accept-Measurement, Send-Measurement headers are optional.  If a
   negotiation is successful, the Timing-Measures header is required.
   The Timing-Measures-Collector header is optional.  All measurement
   values, as well as TI, are 32-bit integers expressed as milliseconds.
   The collector-url is a string representing the URI data should be
   sent back to.

   Measurements are submitted via an HTTP POST request and must contain
   the Timing-Measures header, and should not contain any data in the
   body of the request.  Measurements are sent as key-value pairs in the
   form of measurement:value delimited by semicolons.  If the Timing-
   Measures-Collector header is sent or the relevant HTML meta tag
   exists, the client must send its data to the specified collector-url
   in the body of a POST request, using the data format specified above.

   The user agent must discard the measurements after the Timing
   Interval for the requested metrics expires.











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6.  Security Considerations

   User-agent MUST follow 'same origin' considerations when sending
   timing data















































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7.  IANA Considerations

   The new header fields

      Accept-Measurement

      Send-Measurement

      Timing-Measures

      Timing-Measures-Collector

   should require IANA assignment






































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8.  Closing Thoughts

   Outside of adoption, the goal of this document is to get the
   community thinking about measuring HTTP performance.  While many of
   the current HTTP 2.0 proposals have been designed to improve
   performance, to date, none discuss quantifying the intended
   improvements.

   It is well known by the author that there are shortcomings and
   unanswered questions in this document.  In particular, there is a
   lingering question about whether or not the timing measurements
   should exist within the context of a server connection, or whether
   they are best viewed within the scope of a user session.  Another
   question arises as to what should happen if the user agent closes the
   connection before the timing interval has expired.  With the optional
   X-Timing-Measures-Collector header that can be used to send the
   measurement results to another host, it is the belief of the author
   that measurements should exist as part of a user session, and not
   necessarily tied to a particular connection.  Community consensus on
   this matter is encouraged.

   Another concern is that some of the measurements outlined in the
   "Supported Client Measurements" section are more browser-specific
   than some may be comfortable with.  However, while network timing is
   most obviously relevant for HTTP, it is also possible to infer
   browser and hardware performance by looking at the time elapsed
   processing and rendering the document.  If a server had a full
   performance profile of the user agent it was communicating with, it
   could potentially serve different content or make other decisions
   based on the UA's performance characteristics.

   One glaring omission is the security of the proposed extension.
   While performance data would seem to be of low value to malicious
   users, at the very least the security of the extension should be
   considered.

   Finally, the grammar for the new headers needs to be properly
   defined.  The grammar outlined in the "Proposed HTTP Protocol
   Extension" section is woefully incomplete and syntactically
   incorrect, and is included only for illustrative purposes.

   In closing, the intention is that these, as well as other
   shortcomings in this document, are fleshed out by the community.  The
   more people thinking about these issues, the faster and better the
   web will be.






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9.  References

9.1.  Normative References

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.

9.2.  Informative References

   [Keynote]  "Keynote Systems", <http://www.keynote.com>.

   [Gomez]    "Gomez Networks", <http://www.gomeznetworks.com>.

   [WPT]      "WebPageTest", <http://www.webpagetest.org>.

   [Nav-Timing]
              "Nav-Timing Spec",
              <http://www.w3.org/TR/navigation-timing/>.

































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Author's Address

   Mike McCall
   Akamai Technologies















































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