"This book takes the mystery out of analyzing Web performance. The
authors have skillfully culled through more than a twenty-five years
of performance related research, and have selected the results that
are most critical to Web performance. They have also developed
important new material that deals directly with the special
properties of applications that run on the Web. With everything
together in a single volume, Menasce and Almeida have created a
superb starting point for anyone wishing to explore the world of Web
performance".
Jeffrey P. Buzen,
President of the Computer Measurement Group,
Co-founder of BGS Systems
"In this new book, Menasce and Almeida have retained all the strengths
of their previous indispensible work, emphasizing practical and useful
techniques informed by the best current research. Furthermore,
every chapter reflects the rapid evolution of Web technology, advances
in Web performance research, and the increasingly critical role of the Web in
society. This book is the best guide available to understanding the unique
performance challenges involved in delivering today's Web services."
Mark Crovella,
Associate Professor, Boston University
Technical Director, Network Appliance
"Many have said that the Web is too amorphous and chaotic to permit
meaningful performance forecasts. Menasce and Almeida demolish this
myth. Throughput, response time, and congestion can be measured and
predicted, all using familiar tools from queueing networks that you can
run on your own computer. There is no other book like this. It is a
first."
Peter J. Denning
Professor of Computer Science, George Mason University
and former President of the ACM
"This excellent book gives a quantitative and pragmatic approach to
measuring, analyzing, and understanding web servers. It presents a
good tutorial on the performance issues of web servers, and presents
the analytic tools needed to model them. Web servers have bursty and
highly-skewed load characteristics. This book presents a new way to
model, analyze, and plan for these new performance problems. The book
is a valuable resource for students and for web-administrators."
Jim Gray
Senior Researcher, Microsoft Research
1998 ACM Turing Award Recipient
"This is a welcome approach to the performance analysis of today's
web-based Internet. It is a useful and practical treatment that is
eminently accessible to the non-mathematical professional. An
impressive feature the authors provide is to deal directly with the
fractal nature of web-based traffic; no simple and practical treatment
has been offered before, and theirs is a timely contribution."
Leonard Kleinrock
Professor of Computer Science, UCLA
Chairman and Founder, Nomadix, Inc.