Experimental Study on User-oriented Selection of Optimal Internet Server using Pilot File

摘要

In order to allow users themselves to select the optimal Internet server (that with the fastest response), there have been many studies focusing on using P2P (peer-to-peer) technologies, specific evaluation systems, or special software. However, there have been only a few studies focusing on user-oriented selection methods apart from these systems. Therefore, we proposed a user-oriented selection method using a pilot file that is small enough to be downloaded quickly. We evaluate the performance of our proposed technique statistically through experiments using a laboratory testbed. The testbed emulates the delays and discards of data packets that occur in the real Internet. Evaluation results show that our proposal gives users high selection performance, i.e. a highly reliable prediction of the fastest servers, with a reasonably short required measurement time. In addition, we discuss the optimal size of the pilot file in terms of the optimal server selection performance and the required measurement time.