Mobile
WebRTC Performance from Radio Up
battery, latency, and bandwidth optimization for the wireless web
Video @ bit.ly/io-radioup
Wireless != Wired
Different design constraints
Different performance characteristics
Different optimization criteria
If you continue treating wireless networks same as tethered, you will
succeed at delivering a reliably sub-par experience to your users.
Impact of poor performance...
Impact of 1-second delay - Strangeloop
Impact of 1-second delay...
Impact of 1-second delay - Strangeloop
Our agenda today is...
1. Radio performance 101
Wi-Fi vs. Mobile
2. Performance tips and recommendations
3. ...
4. Profit! *
* Fill steps 3-n with your own awesome application sauce.
Minify CSS, JavaScript and HTML
Application
Inline small images, CSS, and JavaScript
CSS/JavaScript combining
Domain Sharding
HTTP 1.x - 2.0
JavaScript optimization
GPU performance
TLS
....
TCP
Wired Radio Us today, right now... in fact!
Wi-Fi, 3G / 4G performance
Battery life optimization
Mobile
Wi-Fi
2G, 3G, 4G Radio Resource Controller (RRC)
Wireless LAN, aka Wi-Fi...
Wireless extension to existing LAN infrastructure
Same protocol stack, new physical medium
First commercial success ~1999 with 802.11b (11 Mbps)
Target: desktop, laptop
Carrier Sense Multiple Access + Collision Detection
Is anyone talking?
No: begin transmission
Yes: wait until they finish
Collision: stop, sleep for rand() with backoff, retry
Channel load must be kept below 10%.
"If the load increases, the number of collisions will quickly rise, leading to
unstable performance of the entire network."
High Performance Browser Networking: Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi channels 101
Non-overlapping
channels: 1, 6, 11
Wi-Fi is a victim of its own success
Any user, on any network (in the same channel)
can and will affect your latency and throughput!
10-20+ overlapping networks in same channel
shared access medium
Real-world Wi-Fi performance: 2.4 Ghz vs 5 Ghz (YMMV)
Real-world 1st
hop latency
Upgraded router,
removed ~50 ms
of latency.
Median (ms) 95% (ms) 99% (ms)
2.4 Ghz 6.22 34.87 58.91
5 Ghz 0.90 1.58 7.89
Sample data from my own home Wi-Fi network...
Adapt to variable bandwidth
Adapt, do not predict!
Adaptive bitrate streaming
5-10 second chunks of video content
Adapt to variable latency and jitter
High variability for first hop for every packet
Variability != packet loss
Leverage WebRTC ... (check out the I/O session!)
2G, 3G, 4G...
have fundamentally different architecture at the radio layer
Design constraint #1: "Stable" performance + scalability
Control over network performance and resource allocation
Ability to manage 10~100's of active devices within single cell
Coverage of much larger area
Design constraint #2: Maximize battery life
Radio is the second most expensive component (after screen)
Limited amount of available power (as you are well aware)
Constraint #1: "Stable" performance + scalability
Constraint #2: Maximize battery life
Radio Resource Controller (RRC)
Radio Resource Controller
Phone: Hi, I want to transmit data, please?
RRC: OK.
Transmit in [x-y] timeslots
Transmit with Z power
Transmit with Q modulation RRC
... (some time later) ...
All communication and power
RRC: Go into low power state.
management is centralized and
managed by the RRC.
High Performance Browser Networking: Mobile Networks
Control and User-plane latencies
There is a one time cost for control-plane negotiation
User-plane latency is the one-way latency between
packet availability in the device and packet at the base
1-X RTT's of
2 RRC station
negotiations
3 Application
I want to 1
data
send data!
LTE HSPA+ 3G
Idle to connected latency < 100 ms < 100 ms < 2.5 s
User-plane latency < 5 ms < 10 ms < 50 ms
Control-plane User-plane
Same process happens for incoming data, just reverse steps 1 and 2
LTE power state transitions
Idle to Active: 100 ms control-plane latency
Dormant to Active: 50 ms control-plane latency
Active
CP: 100 ms 100 ms CP: <50 ms
Short Long
sleep sleep
100 ms
Idle
Timeout driven state transitions back to idle
10 s
100 ms > 100 ms > 10 s > Idle
Similar state machine for 3G devices
Except CP latencies are much higher
The (short) life of a web request
(Worst case) DNS lookup to resolve the hostname to IP address
(Worst case) New TCP connection, requiring a full roundtrip to the server
(Worst case) TLS handshake with up to two extra server roundtrips!
HTTP request, requiring a full roundtrip to the server
Server processing time
The (short) life of a web request
HSPA HSPA+ / LTE
(200 ms RTT) (80 ms RTT)
Explains a lot of the
Control plane (200-2500 ms) (50-100 ms)
variability!
DNS lookup 200 ms 80 ms
TCP Connection 200 ms 80 ms
TLS handshake (200-400 ms) (80-160 ms)
HTTP request 200 ms 80 ms
Network overhead of
Network latency overhead 600 - 3500 ms 240 - 500 ms
one HTTP request!
Decouple user feedback from network activity
Delay User reaction
0 - 100 ms Instant
Just the
100 - 300 ms Feels sluggish
network
300 - 1000 ms Machine is working...
overhead!
1 s+ Mental context switch
Acknowledge user input immediately
100-200 ms budget for instant feedback
All communication should be asynchronous
provide feedback after 2s (progress bar or status update)
provide a choice after 5s (wait, abort, retry?)
Anticipate RRC latency...
HSPA HSPA+ / LTE
(200 ms RTT) (80 ms RTT)
Control plane (200-2500 ms) (50-100 ms)
DNS lookup 200 ms 80 ms
... ... ... RRC
Plan for "first packet" delay
100's to 1000's of milliseconds of delay for first packet
Adjust UX accordingly!
Much of the "variability" is explained by RRC delays
you can't predict it, but assume you will incur it
Watch those energy tails!
3G state machine
DCH = Active
FACH = Low power
IDLE = ...
Wasted energy
Every data transfer, both big and small, will:
Intermittent transfers are the most
cycle radio into high power
reliable way to destroy the battery life.
reset the power timeouts
Hands on example....
5 Wh battery capacity
5 Wh * 3600 J/Wh = 18000 J battery capacity
10 Joules of consumed energy per "cycle"
idle high-power low-power idle
60 minutes * 10 Joules = 600 Joules of consumed energy per hour
3% of battery capacity per hour! (600 J / 18000J)
Pandora beacons: 0.2% total bytes == 46% battery
A Call for More Energy-Efficient Apps
Measuring energy & radio...
Ping, ping, ping, ... where'd my battery go?
Watch out for...
"real-time" analytics
"real-time" comments
"real-time" <widget>... Record live trace on the phone, or import a pcap!
Battery + radio models for 3G and 4G
Performance linter... caching, compression, etc.
Sidenote: not an issue with Google Analytics real-time! ...
It's all about the battery...
Radio is the second most expensive (energy) component
Radio use at full power can drain full battery in hours
Radio use is expensive regardless of transfer size
Prefetch data
turn off the radio, keep it idle
Minimize periodic data transfers
avoid polling, use adaptive strategy
leverage server push
coalesce requests, defer requests
Prefetch data, leverage (smart) push...
Your server
Google Cloud Messaging for Chrome (new!) GCM
Google Cloud Messaging for Android
collapse_key, delay_while_idle, time_to_live
Prefer prefetch vs. on-demand
how much to prefetch? measure.
Streaming data?
download in one shot where possible
GCM for Chrome, GCM for Android
We've covered the basics of the RAN, now (for fun) let's
take a look at the Core Network architecture...
Packet Gateway
Packet
Internets
Gateway
PCRF
Packet Gateway terminates all connections
IP assignment is done at the PGN
PGN acts as a NAT
Physical layer connectivity != Application connectivity
... turning off the radio does not close your TCP connection!
window.setInterval("keepSessionAlive()", 10000);
Carrier timeouts: 5-30 minutes!
skip the "I'm alive" beacons, please...
are you sure it's not your own servers forcing timeouts? :)
Serving Gateway
Serving Packet
Internets
Gateway Gateway
MME PCRF
Serving Gateway (SGN) is the mobility anchor Mobility Management Entity (MME)
Towers are grouped into "tracking areas" The "user database" for the carrier
SGN may not know which tower the user is in! Billing status, enabled features, ...
Location of the user in the network!
Outbound data-flow
LTE HSPA+ HSPA EDGE GPRS
Core network (AT&T) 40-50 ms 50-200 ms 150-400 ms 600-750 ms 600-750 ms
* highly variable between carriers, local infrastructure, local wireless weather....
Inbound data-flow
LTE HSPA+ HSPA EDGE GPRS
Core network (AT&T) 40-50 ms 50-200 ms 150-400 ms 600-750 ms 600-750 ms
* highly variable between carriers, local infrastructure, local wireless weather....
really... all that, for a single TCP packet?
Good news everybody! ....
LTE shows better performance profile across the board!
perhaps all of that complexity will pay off after all...
2011, 3300 users, 14,000 runs (MLab)
Burst your data and return to idle!
Mobile radio is optimized for bursty data transfers
Bandwidth / latency estimation is a recipe for trouble...
Group requests together, download as much as possible
For streaming transfers, consider prompting Wi-Fi switch...
Not so good news everybody! ....
HSPA+ will be the dominant
network type of the next decade!
Latest HSPA+ releases are
comparable to LTE in performance
3G networks will be with us for at
least another decade
LTE adoption in US and Canada is
way ahead of the world-wide trends
4G Americas - Statistics
Design for variable network performance & availability
It's a multi-generation future: 2G, 3G, 4G
users migrate between G's all the time... plan for it!
Bandwidth and latency is highly variable
burst your data, and return to idle...
Connectivity is intermittent, errors will happen!
have an offline mode - i.e. use a local cache
use a smart backoff algorithm, please! var backoff = backoff.strategy({
randomisationFactor: 0,
initialDelay: 60,
maxDelay: 600
});
backoff.failAfter(10);
Apply application best practices
Measure performance: RUM, synthetic, benchmarking
Eliminate unnecessary resources
Optimize rendering and JavaScript performance
...
Minify CSS, JavaScript and HTML
Application
Inline small images, CSS, and JavaScript
CSS/JavaScript combining
Domain Sharding
HTTP 1.x - 2.0
JavaScript optimization
GPU performance
TLS
....
TCP
Fastest request is a request not made!
Bytes are expensive (literally.. $1+ MB)
Android: public boolean isActiveNetworkMetered()
Reduce latency: use a CDN, use SPDY!
Cache data on the client
no really, cache the data! check your code.
GZIP resources
no really, you would be surprised how many forget...
Pick the appropriate image format
60% of bytes are images
Use lossy compression, check out WebP!
Apply TCP, TLS, mobile and HTTP best practices...
Optimizing TCP server stacks
Optimizing TLS deployments
Optimizing for wireless networks
Optimizing for HTTP 1.x...
Leveraging HTTP 2.0 and SPDY!
...
http://bit.ly/io-hpbn
</shameless self promotion>
Video @ bit.ly/io-radioup
Fin. Questions?
Book @ bit.ly/io-hpbn
+Ilya Grigorik
[email protected]
