On HTTP performance in IoT applications: An analysis of latency and throughput

In recent years, Internet of Things (IoT) industry has developed rapidly thanks to the rise of the smart objects and devices with processing, sensing and actuating capabilities. In order to satisfy a broad range of applications, a variety of application layer protocols has been taken into consideration, since IoT still does not have widely accepted standard protocol. One of prime candidate solutions is HTTP, as a well-known, fundamental client-server protocol and the protocol that is the most compatible with existing network infrastructure. Due to strict IoT specific requirements, however, a detailed characterization of the performance of HTTP for IoT applications is required. This paper presents a detailed analysis of throughput and latency for HTTP/1.1 with pipelining, by evaluating the impact that pipelining factor has on the latency. Based on these performance results, we analyze whether this HTTP/1.1 model should be implemented in IoT systems with significant latency constraints.