Reducing latency on the Internet using Component-Based Download and File-Segment Transfer Protocol

Abstract

This thesis examines the Component-Based Download (hereinafter referred to as "CBD") and the Component-Based Download File-Segment Transfer Protocol (hereinafter referred to as "CBD-FSTP") to combat the latency due to the slow performance of the current file transfer protocols. In particular, we focus on accelerating the download of large files (e.g.: video) from the Internet. This can be achieved by the following two methods: (1) Defining a distributed server mechanism for transferring data known as CBD; and (2) Integrating a new distributed file transfer protocol known as CBD-FSTP More efficient utilization of bandwidth can be obtained by using these two methods. This will lead to a higher throughput and thus a reduced latency. The trade off will be higher processing overhead and network utilization that are no longer major drawbacks because of the emergence of fast computers with increasing processing power and the expansion of fiber optic Gigabit links. According to the data gathered throughout extensive measurements, CBD can speed up the process of downloading large-size files up to 3 times faster compared to conventional methods. The CBD-FSTP can also improve the latency by additional 30% compared to the FSTP method, which is another fast newly-developed file transfer protocol. Results show that CBD-FSTP can be 7 times faster than the File Transfer Protocol (hereinafter referred as "FTP").