User patience and the Web: a hands-on investigation

We present a study of Web user behavior when network performance decreases causing an increase of page transfer times. Real traffic measurements are analyzed to infer whether worsening network conditions translate into greater impatience by the user, which translates in early interruption of TCP connections. Several parameters are studied in order to gather their impact on the interruption probability on Web transfers: time of day, file size, throughput and time elapsed since the beginning of the download. From the results presented, we try to paint a picture of the complex interactions between user perception of the Web and network-level events.