[网络领域顶会追踪系列#24][NSDI'22]Configanator：一种提升CDN性能的数据驱动方法

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Configanator: A Data-driven Approach to Improving CDN Performance

背景

web服务协议栈在持续的演进，以处理网络基础架构中的技术偏移和网站的复杂性。作为这种演进的结果，web服务可以使用众多的协议和配置参数来解决很多实际的网络环境。

挑战

然而，如今，尽管终端用户的网络和设备有着很大的多样性，大部分内容提供商采用了一刀切（one-size-fits-all）的方法来为其面向用户的web服务来配置网络栈（或者最多稍作调整）。

工作

在本文呢中，作者演示了维持现状会导致次优的性能，论证了一个新的框架，该框架扩展了现有的CDN架构，以提供对web服务配置参数的可编程控制。

作者设计了一个数据驱动的框架Configanator，该框架利用链接中的数据来分辨它们的网络和设备特征，并且学习最优的配置参数来提升终端用户体验。

实验

作者在5个trace上（包括一个从全球内容提供商的trace）评估了Configanator，通过两个实时部署评估了真实用户的性能提升。结果表明，Configanator在的多个网站和网络中，提升了32-67%的尾部（第95%）web性能。

原文摘要

The web serving protocol stack is constantly evolving to tackle the technological shifts in networking infrastructure and website complexity. As a result of this evolution, web servers can use a plethora of protocols and configuration parameters to address a variety of realistic network conditions. Yet, today, despite the significant diversity in end-user networks and devices, most content providers have adopted a “one-size-fits-all” approach to configuring the networking stack of their user-facing web servers (or at best employ moderate tuning).

In this paper, we demonstrate that the status quo results in sub-optimal performance and argue for a novel framework that extends existing CDN architectures to provide programmatic control over a web server’s configuration parameters. We designed a data-driven framework, Configanator, that leverages data across connections to identify their network and device characteristics, and learn the optimal configuration parameters to improve end-user performance. We evaluate Configanator on five traces, including one from a global content provider, and evaluate the performance improvements for real users through two live deployments. Our results show that Configanator improves tail (p95) web performance by 32-67% across diverse websites and networks.