Optimizing Internet Application Performance

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EQUINIX WHITEPAPER OPTIMIZING INTERNET APPLICATION PERFORMANCE

By the Equinix Innovations Team

TABLE OF CONTENTS pages

Introduction 2

Speed 3

Availability & Consistency 3

Platform EquinixSM 4-5

How Do We Test Application Performance? 6

Results 7

Round Trip Time, Traceroutes, Availability, and Predictability 7-8

Takeaways 9

By the Equinix Innovations Team

In today’s digital economy, performance can be a strategic differentiator for your company. Whether you’re a bank handling millions of clients online, a retailer dependent on your website to drive sales, or a cloud computing company powering enterprises, performance-related end user experience is one of the key criteria on which your company will be judged. There are numerous examples of how performance can impact revenue:

■■ Amazon — “Every 100ms delay costs Performance isn’t just about the speed of a site; availability and 1 consistency are also important. Being able to deliver consistent, 1% of sales” — for 2009 that translates reliable service is fundamental to customer conversion and into $245 million retention. From frustrated consumers trying to buy gifts for Christmas to multinational companies attempting to do computational modeling, all types of customers become frustrated ■■ Mozilla shaved 2.2 seconds of when websites or cloud services aren’t fast or pages fail to load. load time off its landing pages and Being able to provide your customers a consistent experience, increased download conversions by or in the case of the enterprise, to actually guarantee that performance and consistency with a Service Level Agreement 15.4%, translating into an additional (SLA), translates to increased revenue by improving the end user 60 million downloads each year2 experience and reducing resistance from corporate buyers. In this paper, we describe how leveraging Equinix as the ■■ Microsoft found that an increase of foundation for your services can reduce latency by 15% globally, 500ms of delays on its page loads reduce downtime by up to 80%, and increase predictability, all without having to invest the time or incur the expense to change resulted in losing 1.2% in revenue or redesign your application architecture. per user3

■■ When Shopzilla reduced its page load time by 5 seconds, it saw an increase of 25% in page views and a 7-12% 4 increase in revenue 1. http://sites.google.com/site/glinden/Home/StanfordDataMining.2006-11-28.ppt 2. http://blog.mozilla.com/metrics/category/website-optimization/ 3. http://en.oreilly.com/velocity2009/public/schedule/detail/8523 ■■ 10ms latency could result in 10% less 4. http://assets.en.oreilly.com/1/event/29/Shopzilla%27s%20Site%20Redo%20-%20 5 You%20Get%20What%20You%20Measure%20Presentation.ppt revenue for U.S. brokerages 5. http://www.tabbgroup.com/PublicationDetail.aspx?PublicationID=346

OPTIMIZING INTERNET APPLICATION PERFORMANCE

SPEED The speed of your site is judged on responsiveness to actions on the page (script requests, image renders, etc.) and on how quickly users can transition from page to page (loading a new page). The elements of speed can be further broken down: the network latency and bandwidth between your end users and your site, the performance of your server infrastructure in responding to a request, and how quickly the user’s browser can render your site based on how the web page is coded. While there is a tremendous body of knowledge on how to increase bandwidth, optimize servers and code web pages, network latency is generally considered immutable. But new studies show that if you reduce latency, it will have a tremendous effect on page load times, even more so than bandwidth, with every 20ms of reduced network latency resulting in a 7-15% decrease in page load times.6

BENEFIT OF ADDING BENEFIT OF PAGE LOAD TIME AS AN EXTRA MBPS REDUCING RTT RTT DECREASES 40% 20% 4,000

18% 3,500 30% 16% 3,000

14% 2,500 20% 12% 2,000

10% 1,500 10% Percent Improvement Percent Page Load Time (ms) Time Load Page 1,000

Percent reduction in PLT reduction Percent 8%

0% 6% 500

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 0 0 80 60 40 20 80 60 40 20 220 200 180 160 140 120 100 240 220 200 180 160 140 120 100 Bandwidth (Mbps) RTT (ms) RTT (ms)

Conventional advice on reducing latency recommends using a third-party provider such as a Content-Delivery Network (CDN) to distribute content and leveraging their infrastructure to get geographically closer to the end user. While a CDN can help accelerate static content and effectively distribute video, the increasingly dynamic nature of the web (social media, real-time API access, etc.) reduces CDN effectiveness, and in a real-time cloud application may not be able to help at all. This study shows how it is possible to reduce network latency across the internet by housing application infrastructure in Equinix data centers and leveraging the unique network density located in them.

AVAILABILITY & CONSISTENCY Availability of a website isn’t solely dependent on how well you operate your infrastructure; it is also affected by the performance of your internet service provider (ISP) and other service providers. Disputes between carriers have sometimes resulted in a fragmented internet, with some end users unable to access content while others are unaffected.7 Likewise, achieving consistent site performance is based on an amalgamation of internal factors (e.g., proper capacity planning, load management) and external factors (e.g., internet performance, local traffic). Again, while the principles of optimizing the internal factors are well understood, how to optimize the external factors has seemed to be a secret held by only the largest content providers such as 6. http://www.belshe.com/2010/05/24/more- Google or Amazon. In this whitepaper we describe how these large content companies bandwidth-doesnt-matter-much/ 7. http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/ increase their control over external forces, and how your company can reproduce this archives/2008/03/18/cogent-telia-peering-dispute- easily and cost effectively. widely-felt/

OPTIMIZING INTERNET APPLICATION PERFORMANCE

PLATFORM EQUINIX SM Why do more than 3,600 customers, including the top carriers, First, all ISPs architect their networks with backbone connections CDNs, content providers, and cloud providers choose Equinix as engineered as high-speed trunks between key network nodes. their data center services provider? Equinix provides some of the Since these backbones are responsible for carrying massive most reliable, secure facilities in the world, and our long track amounts of data and distributing them across the network, they record of delivering excellent service has earned the trust of top are critical to each carrier. Therefore, carriers devote significant companies’ CTOs and CIOs who know application performance engineering and operational resources to ensure the backbone is mission critical. But equally important, Equinix data centers runs as quickly and with as little contention as possible. By are situated in critical locations throughout the internet, contrast, the regional coverage or non-backbone networks built which enables Equinix customers to optimize their end users’ by that same ISP may have some degree of oversubscription, experience. To understand how, let’s quickly review the structure resulting in unpredictable behavior and network congestion. of the internet. Second, the physical cables forming these backbone networks To the general public, the internet is a “cloud” they can plug generally converge on certain locations due to population density into anywhere, but the fundamental structure of the internet and geographic limitations. In addition, sub-sea cables that is actually drastically different. The internet is a vast series connect the world’s continents reach the shore at very distinct of interconnected networks that ride on the physical capacity locations based on geographic characteristics (away from of hundreds of telecom providers. These networks overlap shipping lanes to prevent cable cuts, but still near major cities), geographically (some major cities have more than 50 networks), resulting in placement similar or identical to where ISPs locate and they also share common characteristics. their backbone networks.

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NEW ZEALAND

Map of Undersea Fiber Optic Cables. To request a printed copy, visit: http://www.equinix.com/requestmap.

OPTIMIZING INTERNET APPLICATION PERFORMANCE

Third, ISPs must have commercial agreements with each other to with each other in our facilities around the world, and the carrier pass traffic, and physically connect backbones with each other to connections to our facilities are their backbone links that expedite accomplish this. The locations where the backbones tie together, internet traffic. also known as peering points, are the bridge between carriers. Thus, a route between two computers connected to different Equinix customers choose to build their infrastructure inside our carriers might not be the shortest possible route: data sent from data centers to ensure reliability and security, while connecting a computer in Boston to a computer in Maine may go through to the carriers they choose in order to leverage the world’s most a peering point in New York. The implications become even reliable and efficient network routes. This allows businesses greater in Asia, where a PC in Singapore trying to reach Sydney to mitigate the unpredictability of the internet by connecting may be routed through Los Angeles, transiting the Pacific Ocean directly to the ISPs their end users use most often, whether a twice. These types of routing inefficiencies can have devastating large cable broadband provider in the U.S., a French ISP, or a consequences on performance. wireless provider for smartphones. Because the physical speed limitations caused by geographical distances can also be a factor, Equinix’s data centers were built to act as the major peering Equinix has built data centers all around the world, enabling points for ISPs, and our founding principle is to serve as a neutral our customers to locate their infrastructure as close to their end location for carriers and their customers to meet and efficiently users as possible. We call our combination of reliable data centers, exchange traffic. Equinix is the only global provider of carrier- located around the world, which contain dynamic ecosystems of neutral data center services. More than 600 carriers connect customers and networks “Platform Equinix.”

TYPICAL ROUTE 6 TO END USER HOPS

7 CUSTOMER HOPS

6 HOPS

OPTIMAL ROUTE 3 TO END USER HOPS

A CUSTOMER 4 B HOPS C

4 HOPS

OPTIMIZING INTERNET APPLICATION PERFORMANCE

HOW DO WE TEST APPLICATION PERFORMANCE?

In collaboration with Compuware/Gomez, Equinix created a Gomez is the only solution able to provide an accurate view into dedicated test platform to quantify the application performance the end user experience from anywhere on the internet, anywhere enabled by Platform Equinix. By building a “beacon server” in the world, on any carrier. In addition, the Gomez platform is connected to multiple carriers, Equinix simulated the effects of extensible and flexible enough for Equinix to capture standard different application routing scenarios—connected to only one data, such as end-to-end connection time and availability, and carrier or connected to a multitude of carriers—using the same also create custom traceroute scripts to provide visibility into hardware, software and physical location to remove as many actual network paths taken, by performing scripted routines variables as possible. In addition, to represent the impact of using their last-mile network. The resulting data was parsed by geographic diversity, Equinix replicated the beacon server at sites removing outlying data (the bottom and top 2.5% of results for on the East Coast (Ashburn, Va.) and West Coast (Silicon Valley, all tests), sorted by region and statistically analyzed to calculate Calif.). The beacon server was initially configured to represent a variance (which translates into predictability). typical server deployment with a connection to a single ISP in one location. The configuration was then connected with up to five Equinix tested three key parameters: roundtrip time, traceroute, carriers across multiple sites. and availability. Roundtrip time represents the time it takes to establish an initial connection to a server. This minimizes Gomez, the web performance division of Compuware, provides any differences in page rendering time, as well as any potential the industry’s leading solution for testing the performance, concerns about database or back-end access. Differentials in availability, and quality of web and mobile applications. The roundtrip times can then be isolated to correlate with network Gomez platform integrates web load testing, web performance speed. The traceroute test counts how many network hops exist management, web cross-browser testing, and web performance between the last-mile test node and the beacon servers. Finally, business analysis, enabling organizations to test from the availability data was collected from all global locations, which “outside-in” across all users, browsers, devices, geographies, and factors in the reliability of the internet as a whole . data centers. Gomez has created a unique monitoring solution that aligns with our attempt at representing real performance across the internet. Its Active Last Mile capability provides on-demand active monitoring from more than 150,000 real, consumer-grade computers connected to over 2,500 local ISPs and wireless carriers in more than 168 countries around the globe.

The Gomez Network: World’s Largest and Most Comprehensive Performance Monitoring and Testing Network

Source: http://www.gomez.com/ products-solutions/technology/the- gomez-network/

Backbone Gomez Last Mile Virtual Test Bed Your Actual User

Web Performance Web Performance Cross-Browser Testing Real User Monitoring Management and Load Testing Management and Load Testing 500+ browser/OS combo’s Worldwide, wherever 150+ locations 150,000+ locations 5,000+ supported devices your users are

OPTIMIZING INTERNET APPLICATION PERFORMANCE

RESULTS When compared to a typical deployment, roundtrip time, traceroutes, and availability were all materially better in the multi-carrier, multi-node solution. In addition, predictability was improved across all three factors.

ROUND TRIP TIME One Carrier Multicarrier Roundtrip time was reduced 17% globally, in Asia-Pacific (APAC) by a APAC Total striking 29% (65ms), Canada by 24% (25ms), Latin America (LATAM) by 14% (22ms), U.S. by 11% (11ms), and Europe Canada Middle East/Africa (EMEA) by 7% (9ms).Using the modeling done in other EMEA Total research8, with a 20ms improvement representing a 7-15% drop in page load Latma Total times, we can extrapolate the dramatic improvements in performance possible. US

Grand Total

0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.25

Seconds

TRACEROUTES One Carrier Multicarrier Traceroutes depict how many different routers a packet must traverse on its way APAC Total to the final destination. A more direct route means fewer points in the path for congestion, failure, or variability. Canada By leveraging direct access to multiple carriers in one Equinix facility, the EMEA Total number of hops to the beacon server is dramatically reduced. Globally network Latma Total hops decreased by 24%, APAC decreased by 31%, EMEA by 27%, Canada by 21%, LATAM by 16%, and the U.S. by 7%. This US translates into more direct connectivity from your end users to your servers. Grand Total

4.0 6.0 8.0 10.0 12.0 14.0 16.0 18.0

Network hops

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

OPTIMIZING INTERNET APPLICATION PERFORMANCE

AVAILABILITY One Carrier Multicarrier Availability improvements achieved an 81% reduction in downtime globally, translating into a drop from 11 to two APAC Total hours of downtime in a year. Typically, availability measurements simply show Canada whether or not your site infrastructure is up and whether or not it is reachable EMEA Total from a single test node. By using Gomez’s Active Last Mile monitoring, we gain Latma Total visibility into site availability from the end user’s perspective, factoring in whatever connectivity or availability issues their US internet connection might be introducing. This provides a more holistic view of site Grand Total availability. By deploying in our optimized fashion, downtime in Hong Kong went 0 2.0 4.0 6.0 8.0 10.0 12.0 14.0 16.0 18.0 from 50 to 0 hours, in UAE from 120 to 0 hours, and in the U.S. from 13 to 0 Hours of downtime annually hours. For end users, this represents the difference between failing to access your application and the assurance they can access them reliably every time.

PREDICTABILITY One Carrier Multicarrier By taking the standard deviations from all the source data, we find 77% less variability in connection time, 28% less Standard Deviation variability in traceroute hops, and 23% End to End less variability in availability. Not only is performance improved across the board, but predictability of that performance is also increased dramatically. Standard Deviation of Traceroute

Standard Deviation of Availability

0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0

Standard deviation

OPTIMIZING INTERNET APPLICATION PERFORMANCE

TAKEAWAYS

How difficult is it to implement the architecture we tested? Simply by colocating at the right data centers and being able to Amazingly simple. As this study clearly demonstrates, where directly access multiple ISPs’ backbones, you can achieve the you locate your infrastructure plays a huge role in how well your significant performance benefits that allow companies like Google site or application performs. Without any software or server or Microsoft to be fast for all users independent of their location. optimization, we were able to obtain significant improvements in These performance improvements translate into measurable performance by leveraging Equinix as a global interconnection business benefits: hub. This represents a tremendous ROI compared to expensive software engineering efforts or infrastructure overhauls. By ■■ Increased revenue for retailers leveraging Platform Equinix, you can increase the performance ■■ More page views (and ad views) for content companies of your site by 15-20% and increase availability and predictability ■■ More satisfied customers for any type of site or application without having to redo any software or hardware. Whether your customers are regional or global, Equinix has data As studies have shown, performance is critical to the end user center services in the right locations to help you dramatically experience. A recent survey by Equation Research showed many improve application performance to end users. consumers will abandon a website or company application that performs slowly9:

■■ Nearly one-third (32%) of consumers will start abandoning slow sites after one and five seconds.

■■ 39% of consumers say speed is more important than functionality for most websites, while only one in five ranked site functionality as more important.

■■ More than one-third (37%) of consumers said they would not return to a slow site, and 27 percent would likely jump to a competitor’s site. 9. http://www.gomez.com/wp-content/downloads/GomezWebSpeedSurvey.pdf

TOKYO TORONTO SHANGHAI CLEVELAND BUFFALO DETROIT PITTSBURGH AMSTERDAM SEATTLE HONG KONG LONDON CHICAGO BOSTON DUSSELDORF FRANKFURT NEW YORK DENVER INDIANAPOLIS PARIS SILICON VALLEY ST. LOUIS PHILADELPHIA MUNICH SINGAPORE LOS ANGELES NASHVILLE WASHINGTON, DC ZURICH

PHOENIX ATLANTA GENEVA DALLAS TAMPA

MIAMI

SYDNEY

Equinix, Inc. (Nasdaq: EQIX) provides global data center services that ensure the vitality of the information-driven world. Global enterprises, content and financial companies, and more than 600 network service providers rely upon Equinix’s insight and expertise to protect and connect their most valued information assets. Equinix operates International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) and partner data centers across 35 metro areas in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific.