Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro Tecnológico. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ciência da Computação. / Made available in DSpace on 2012-10-20T15:50:14Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 197462.pdf: 1505117 bytes, checksum: 6ba7673895fee0401b83d1288946f91f (MD5) / Os servidores Cache Web são utilizados como alternativa nas empresas em que grande parte dos usuários requisitam as mesmas informações em um determinado período de tempo. Normalmente, mantêm-se uma cópia local dos objetos requisitados neste servidor, para que nas próximas requisições deste mesmo objeto, não haja a necessidade de requisitá-lo novamente. Com o aumento das requisições, aumenta o número de novos objetos a serem armazenados. A medida em que o espaço em disco for diminuindo, há a necessidade de implementar neste servidor, políticas de substituição de arquivos que mantenham a organização e manutenção do cache. De acordo com a política escolhida haverá uma maior ou menor quantidade de arquivos encontrados em requisições futuras. Neste trabalho é desenvolvido um simulador Web Cache, que a partir de log's gerados por uma empresa específica, determina-se a melhor política de substituição de arquivos a ser implantada neste local. Neste protótipo foi implementado três políticas: SIZE, LRU e LFU, que são as políticas mais utilizadas nestes servidores.

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Esta tese de doutorado apresenta a investigação de alternativas para melhorar o desempenho de ambientes Web, avaliando o impacto da utilização de mecanismos de diferenciação de serviços em todos os pontos do sistema. Foram criados e modelados no OPNET Modeler cenários com diferentes configurações voltadas tanto para a diferenciação de serviços, quanto para o congestionamento da rede. Foi implementado um servidor cache com suporte à diferenciação de serviços (cache CDF), que constitui uma contribuição dentro deste trabalho, complementando o cenário de diferenciação de serviços de forma positiva, assegurando que os ganhos obtidos em outras etapas do sistema não sejam perdidos no momento da utilização do cache. Os principais resultados obtidos mostram que a diferenciação de serviços introduzida de forma isolada em partes do sistema, pode não gerar os ganhos de desempenho desejados. Todos os equipamentos considerados nos cenários propostos possuem características reais e os modelos utilizados no OPNET foram avaliados e validados pelos seus fabricantes. Assim, os modelos que implementam os cenários considerados constituem também uma contribuição importante deste trabalho, uma vez que o estudo apresentado não se restringe a uma modelagem teórica, ao contrário, aborda aspectos bem próximos da realidade, constituindo um possível suporte de gerenciamento de sistemas Web / This PhD thesis presents the investigation of alternatives to improve the performance of Web environments by evaluating the impact of using differentiated service mechanisms in all points of the system. Several scenarios were created and modeled in the OPNET Modeler, with different configurations of both differentiated services and network overloading. A special cache server supporting differentiated services (CDF cache) was proposed and included in the model, comprising one of the major contributions of this work once it positively complements the differentiated service scenario, making that the gains obtained with other stages of the system do not be spoiled when using the cache. The main results obtained show that the adoption of differentiated services in isolated parts of the system cannot generate the expected performance gains. The features of all the equipments considered in the several scenarios defined in this work are very close to the reality and the models used in the OPNET were evaluated and validated by the companies that produce those equipments. Thus, the models that implement the scenarios considered in this work also comprises an important contribution of this thesis, once the study presented is not just a theoretical modeling exercise but, conversely, it approaches aspects very close to the reality, comprising a possible Web system management support

With the amount of users on the web steadily increasing websites must at times endure heavy loads and risk grinding to a halt beneath the flood of visitors. One solution to this problem is by using HTTP reverse proxy caching, which acts as an intermediate between web application and user. Content from the application is stored and passed on, avoiding the need for the application produce it anew for every request. One popular application designed solely for this task is Varnish; another interesting application for the task is Nginx which is primarily designed as a web server. This thesis compares the performance of the two applications in terms of number of requests served in relation to response time, as well as system load and free memory. With both applications using their default configuration, the experiments find that Nginx performs better in the majority of tests performed. The difference is however very slightly in tests with low request rate.

Esta tese de doutorado apresenta a investigação de alternativas para melhorar o desempenho de ambientes Web, avaliando o impacto da utilização de mecanismos de diferenciação de serviços em todos os pontos do sistema. Foram criados e modelados no OPNET Modeler cenários com diferentes configurações voltadas tanto para a diferenciação de serviços, quanto para o congestionamento da rede. Foi implementado um servidor cache com suporte à diferenciação de serviços (cache CDF), que constitui uma contribuição dentro deste trabalho, complementando o cenário de diferenciação de serviços de forma positiva, assegurando que os ganhos obtidos em outras etapas do sistema não sejam perdidos no momento da utilização do cache. Os principais resultados obtidos mostram que a diferenciação de serviços introduzida de forma isolada em partes do sistema, pode não gerar os ganhos de desempenho desejados. Todos os equipamentos considerados nos cenários propostos possuem características reais e os modelos utilizados no OPNET foram avaliados e validados pelos seus fabricantes. Assim, os modelos que implementam os cenários considerados constituem também uma contribuição importante deste trabalho, uma vez que o estudo apresentado não se restringe a uma modelagem teórica, ao contrário, aborda aspectos bem próximos da realidade, constituindo um possível suporte de gerenciamento de sistemas Web / This PhD thesis presents the investigation of alternatives to improve the performance of Web environments by evaluating the impact of using differentiated service mechanisms in all points of the system. Several scenarios were created and modeled in the OPNET Modeler, with different configurations of both differentiated services and network overloading. A special cache server supporting differentiated services (CDF cache) was proposed and included in the model, comprising one of the major contributions of this work once it positively complements the differentiated service scenario, making that the gains obtained with other stages of the system do not be spoiled when using the cache. The main results obtained show that the adoption of differentiated services in isolated parts of the system cannot generate the expected performance gains. The features of all the equipments considered in the several scenarios defined in this work are very close to the reality and the models used in the OPNET were evaluated and validated by the companies that produce those equipments. Thus, the models that implement the scenarios considered in this work also comprises an important contribution of this thesis, once the study presented is not just a theoretical modeling exercise but, conversely, it approaches aspects very close to the reality, comprising a possible Web system management support

URL parser and normalization processes are common and important operations in different web frameworks and technologies. In recent years, security researchers have targeted these processes and discovered high impact vulnerabilities and exploitation techniques. In a different approach, we will focus on semantic disconnect among different framework-independent web technologies (e.g., browsers, proxies, cache servers, web servers) which results in different URL interpretations. We coined the term “Path Confusion” to represent this disagreement and this thesis will focus on analyzing enabling factors and security impact of this problem.In this thesis, we will show the impact and importance of path confusion in two attack classes including Style Injection by Relative Path Overwrite (RPO) and Web Cache Deception (WCD). We will focus on these attacks as case studies to demonstrate how utilizing path confusion techniques makes targeted sites exploitable. Moreover, we propose novel variations of each attack which would expand the number of vulnerable sites and introduce new attack scenarios. We will present instances which have been secured against these attacks, while being still exploitable with introduced Path Confusion techniques. To further elucidate the seriousness of path confusion, we will also present the large scale analysis results of RPO and WCD attacks on high profile sites. We present repeatable methodologies and automated path confusion crawlers which detect thousands of sites that are still vulnerable to RPO or WCD only with specific types of path confusion techniques. Our results attest the severity of path confusion based class of attacks and how extensively they could hit the clients or systems. We analyze some browser-based mitigation techniques for RPO and discuss that WCD cannot be dealt as a common vulnerability of each component; instead it arises when an ecosystem of individually impeccable components ends up in a faulty situation.

With the continuing growth in network traffic and increasing diversity in web content, web caching, together with various network functions (NFs), has been introduced to enhance security, optimize network performance, and save expenses. In a large enterprise network with more than tens of thousands of users, a single proxy server is not enough to handle a large number of requests and turns to group processing. When multiple web cache proxies are working as a cluster, they talk with each other and share cached objects by using internet cache protocol (ICP). This leads to poor scalability. This thesis describes the development of a framework that provides the efficient management of a distributed web cache. A controller is introduced into the cluster of proxy servers and becomes responsible for managing objects shared within the cluster. By obtaining a knowledge of global states from the controller, proxy servers that are working in the group do not need to query its neighbors' storage. This reduces traffic in the cluster and saves the computing resources of associated proxy servers. The evaluation on a caching proxy benchmark has shown that our approach demonstrates a superior scalability in comparison to an ICP web caching cluster.

Airplanes have different ways to connect to the ground, including satellite air-to-ground communication (SA2GC) and direct air-to-ground communication (DA2GC). Each connection/link offers a different varying amount of transmission capacity over flight time. The traffic generated in the airplane must be forwarded/sent to ground over the available links. It is however not clear how the traffic should be forwarded so that traffic quality of service (QoS) requirements are met. The thesis at hand considers this question, and implements an algorithm handling the forwarding decision with three different forwarding schemes. Those consider traffic parameters in calculating a value assigned to each traffic flow, over a combination of priority, delay requirement and the number of times a traffic flow is dropped. The forwarding algorithm relies on proposed in-flight broadband connectivity (IFBC) network traffic and air-to-ground (A2G) link models, which aim at approximating the network environment of future IFBC networks. It is shown that QoS requirements of traffic flows in terms of packet loss and delay cannot be satisfied with capacities offered by current DA2GC and SA2GC technology. For a future scenario, with higher assumed link capacities, the QoS requirements are met to a higher extent. This is shown in lower packet loss and delay experienced by the respective traffic flows. Further, it is shown that the performance can be improved with specific forwarding schemes used by the forwarding algorithm. It is also investigated how a web cache can be used as a fallback technology. For this a required web cache hit rate is found, which should be high enough to offload the network with content served from the cache. Overall, the thesis aims at proposing an efficient traffic forwarding technique, and at giving insight into an alternative if this technique fails. / Flygplan har olika sätt att ansluta till marken, inklusive satellit-mark-kommunikation (SA2GC) och direkt luft till markkommunikation (DA2GC). Varje anslutning/länk erbjuder en annan varierande mängd överföringskapacitet under flygtid. Den trafik som genereras i flygplanet måste vidarebefordras/skickas till marken över de tillgängliga länkarna. Det är emellertid inte klart hur trafiken ska vidarebefordras så att trafiksäkerhetskvaliteten (QoS) uppfylls. Avhandlingen handlar om denna fråga och implementerar en algoritm som hanterar vidarebefordringsbeslutet med tre olika vidarebefordringssystem. De betraktar trafikparametrar vid beräkning av ett värde som tilldelas varje trafikflöde, över en kombination av prioritet, fördröjningskrav och antalet gånger ett trafikflöde tappas. Vidarebefordringsalgoritmen är beroende av föreslagna bredbandsförbindelser (IFBC) i nätverk och A2G-länkmodeller, som syftar till att approximera nätverksmiljön för framtida IFBC-nätverk. Det visas att QoS-krav på trafikflöden när det gäller paketförlust och fördröjning inte kan tillgodoses med kapacitet som erbjuds av nuvarande DA2GC- och SA2GC-teknik. För ett framtida scenario, med högre antagna länkkapacitet, uppfylls QoS-kraven i högre utsträckning. Detta visas med lägre paketförlust och fördröjning som upplevs av respektive trafikflöden. Vidare är det visat att prestanda kan förbättras med specifika vidarekopplingsscheman som används av vidarebefordringsalgoritmen. Det undersöks också hur en webbcache kan användas som en återgångsteknik. För detta hittas en obligatorisk webbcache-träfffrekvens, som bör vara tillräckligt hög för att ladda upp nätverket med innehåll som serveras från cacheminnet. Sammanfattningsvis syftar uppsatsen till att föreslå en effektiv trafiköverföringsteknik och att ge insikt om ett alternativ om denna teknik misslyckas.

Websites are shifting from static model to dynamic model, in order to deliver their users with dynamic, interactive, and personalized experiences. However, dynamic content generation comes at a cost – each request requires computation as well as communication across multiple components within the website and across the Internet. In fact, dynamic pages are constructed on the fly, on demand. Due to their construction overheads and non-cacheability, dynamic pages result in substantially increased user response times, server load and increased bandwidth consumption, as compared to static pages. With the exponential growth of Internet traffic and with websites becoming increasingly complex, performance and scalability have become major bottlenecks for dynamic websites. A variety of strategies have been proposed to address these issues. Many of these solutions perform well in their individual contexts, but have not been analyzed in an integrated fashion. In our work, we have carried out a study of combining a carefully chosen set of these approaches and analyzed their behavior. Specifically, we consider solutions based on the recently-proposed fragment caching technique, since it ensures both correctness and freshness of page contents. We have developed mechanisms for reducing bandwidth consumption and dynamic page construction overheads by integrating fragment caching with various techniques such as proxy-based caching of dynamic contents, pre-generating pages, and caching program code. We start with presenting a dynamic proxy caching technique that combines the benefits of both proxy-based and server-side caching approaches, without suffering from their individual limitations. This technique concentrates on reducing the bandwidth consumption due to dynamic web pages. Then, we move on to presenting mechanisms for reducing dynamic page construction times -- during normal loading, this is done through a hybrid technique of fragment caching and page pre-generation, utilizing the excess capacity with which web servers are typically provisioned to handle peak loads. During peak loading, this is achieved by integrating fragment-caching and code-caching, optionally augmented with page pre-generation. In summary, we present a variety of methods for integrating existing solutions for serving dynamic web pages with the goal of achieving reduced bandwidth consumption from the web infrastructure perspective, and reduced page construction times from user perspective.