Evaluation of ESI and Class-Based Delta Encoding

Abstract

The portion of web traffic attributed to dynamic web content is substantial and continues to grow as users expect more personalization and tailored information. Unfortunately, dynamic content is costly to generate. Moreover, traditional web caching schemes are not very effective for dynamically-created pages. In this paper we study two acceleration techniques for dynamic content. The first technique is Edge-Side Includes (ESI), and the second is Class-Based Delta Encoding. To evaluate these schemes, we present a model for the construction of dynamic web pages. We use simulation to explore how system, page and algorithm parameters affect the performance of dynamic-content delivery techniques, and we present a detailed comparison of ESI and delta encoding in two representative scenarios.