A Web Access SHaping method to improve the performance of congested servers

This paper proposes WASH, a Web Access SHaping method, to realize overload-tolerant and highly accessible web sites. Due to the explosive spread of the Internet and emerging sophisticated web applications, servers will become the bottlenecks of the Web. WASH works as a reverse proxy with load balancing and improves the service quality of popular servers. WASH provides two innovative mechanisms: load control with active process limit and application-aware request scheduling. Comparative experiments against current load balancers demonstrate the following superiority of WASH in handling heavy congestion: a) WASH keeps the response time for single page display to below 5 seconds and b) WASH maximizes the throughput of completed page displays and sessions.