A Study of Two Methods of Serving Large Files over the Internet
Joshua D. Knepfle · OhioLink ETD Center (Ohio Library and Information Network) · 2001
It is becoming increasingly more important to companies with a web presence to be able to serve a large number of large files to a large number of users on the Internet today.As user connection speeds increase, the demand for larger and larger files increases.This thesis investigates a method of serving those files as an alternative to the current method of a web server farm and arcane URLs which prove to be unwieldy to users.The method separates the web serving, file storing, and indexing of those files into three parts in order to facilitate efficient file serving and a simple interface for novice users.To determine the relative performance characteristics of the proposed and existing systems, simulations are modeled in the discrete event simulation software, OPNET Modeler.The results show that in general, the traditional system performs slightly better than the proposed system.However, the ease of use of this new system compared with the old, along with the comparable performance characteristics to the traditional system, suggests its usefulness in certain situations where users may require a system to be simple or where better control over the ability to upgrade is important.