Measuring the web with boomerang

Why measure?boomerang

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Measuring the web with boomerang

Philip Tellis / [email protected]

SF Performance Meetup / 2010-08-11

SF Performance Meetup / 2010-08-11 Measuring the web with boomerang

http://www.meetup.com/SF-Web-Performance-Group/calendar/14252574/



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$ finger philip

Philip [email protected]

@bluesmoonyahoogeekhttp://bluesmoon.info/


http://twitter.com/bluesmoon

http://bluesmoon.info/



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The slow webMeasurementsMeasuring with javascript

Where does all the time go?




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Who controls it?

Some of this we control and some of it we don’t




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Back end

Measuring and improving back end performance can be doneduring development




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80-20

Turns out that less than 20% of the time is spent on the backend




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Front end

It’s what we can’t control that bites us




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Too many variations

browsers




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Too many variations

plugins




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Too many variations

OSes




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Too many variations

viruses




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Too many variations

antiviruses




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Too many variations

microwaves




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Too many variations

baby monitors




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Too many variations

naughty neighbours




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Too many variations

file shares




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Too many variations

governments




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Too many variations

rodents




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Too many variations

Try simulating all that in the lab!




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We need to measure real end-user performance




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We need to measure it from the real end-user’s box




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Ask the user?




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Bias

While this might work, it isn’t necessarily representative




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A/B testing

You also want to be able to dynamically tune which users getwhich tests




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Phone home

It’s most useful if you can send these measurements back toyour server for analysis




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Mostly ubiquitous

We know that javascript is available on almost every browser




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Rich pages

We really want to measure the performance of rich pageswhich depend on javascript already




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Limited

But javascript can’t measure everything... we get as close aswe can




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What?How does it work?Accuracy

A piece of javascript that you add to your web page where itmeasures and beacons back to you the end user’s perceivedperformance of your page




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How?

<script src="boomerang.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script type="text/javascript">BOOMR.init({user_ip: "<user’s ip address>",beacon_url: "http://yoursite.com/path/to/beacon.php"});</script>




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What does it do?

About once a week, measures user’s bandwidth andlatency to your serverOn (almost) every request, measures the time it took toload the current pageBeacons these results back to your serverOther stuff based on plugins




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How does it do it?

Let’s take that one at a time




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How do we measure latency?

Download a 32 byte gif 10 times in sequenceMeasure the time to download eachDiscard the first measurement because it’s overpricedCalculate the arithmetic mean, standard deviation andmargin of error of the remaining




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How do we measure bandwidth?

After the latency test is done, we download progressivelylarger imagesStop at the first image that times outRedownload that image a few more timesCalculate the median, standard deviation and margin oferror of the largest images




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How do we measure page load time?

In the onbeforeunload event, measure the time andstore it in a cookieIn the onload event, check the cookie, and measure thedifference with the current timeWe also make sure that the page that set the cookie is thereferrer of the current page




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What? Two pages?

Yes, this needs two pages and cookies. If those aren’tsupported, we try to use the WebTiming API.




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How accurate is it?

Latency measurements are very accurate (±1%)Bandwidth is to an order of magnitude. For badconnections can be ±30%

Page load time sometimes has outliers, you needpost-filteringThe margin of error tells you how good your data is




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FilteringGroupingMore...

What do we do with the data?

Sanity checking to:Remove fake dataRemove abusive dataMaybe just rate limiting




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What do we do with the data?

Statistical analysis to:Remove outliersAggregate based on bandwidth blocksMeasure trends over time and correlate them with codechanges




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Bandwidth slabs

0-100 kbps100-300 kbps300-2000 kbps2-6 Mbps6+ Mbps




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Bandwidth slabs

Group page load times based on bandwidth slab




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Bandwidth slabs

Data points from some countries may require smaller slabs




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Geographic data

Looking at latency from different geographic locations can tellyou where to put your next CDN




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ISPs

Grouping data by ISP can tell you who’s behaving badly




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More data

Write plugins to get more performance dataWe already have a DNS pluginI’m thinking of an IPv6 v/s IPv4 pluginWhat about a full WebTiming plugin?




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You decide

Once you have the data, you can do anything with it




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Thank you




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Photo credits

flickr.com/photos/21233184@N02/4389412851


http://www.flickr.com/photos/21233184@N02/4389412851/



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Contact me

Philip Tellisyahoogeek@bluesmoonhttp://bluesmoon.info/slideshare.net/[email protected]


http://twitter.com/bluesmoon

http://bluesmoon.info/

http://www.slideshare.net/bluesmoon



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References

github.com/yahoo/boomerangMore bandwidth doesn’t matter (much) – Mike BelsheAnalysing Bandwidth & Latency – YUI BlogIt’s the latency, stupid – Stuart CheshireThe statistics of web performance


http://github.com/yahoo/boomerang/

http://www.belshe.com/2010/05/24/more-bandwidth-doesnt-matter-much/

http://www.yuiblog.com/blog/2010/04/08/analyzing-bandwidth-and-latency/

http://www.stuartcheshire.org/rants/Latency.html

http://www.slideshare.net/bluesmoon/index-3441823


Technology

Measuring the web with boomerang