Minimal HTTP header for traffic critical applications

Abstract

Urgency of the research. Every year amount of different mobile devices has been growing. Mobile devices are not only smartphones, laptops and tablets. Many single board computers appeared alongside with IoT (internet of things) direction, which allows connecting anything to the Internet. Amount of mobile devices exceeded amount of desktop computers in 2013. Amount of traffic which mobile devices transfer per month was 7*1018 bytes in 2016. This number will only grow and will reach 10.8 * 1018 bytes in 2017. There is no distinction between web applications for mobile devices and desktop computers anymore. Amount of the web applications have been growing every year as well.

Target setting. We propose to use minimum possible configuration of the HTTP header to decrease the data transferred between client and server software applications. This can be useful especially for mobile devices, which work over 3G and 4G networks with limited battery life. Theoretical minimum header configuration was compared against real data, which has been obtained during the experiment. The results of the comparison give us the information about possibility of decreasing HTTP traffic. The fact that text and image information headers are the biggest tells us to concentrate the attention on these two types of information.

Actual scientific researches and issues analysis. Many scientists from all over the world try to come up with different solutions to improve transmission of HTTP traffic in mobile networks. HTTP is scalable application layer protocol which allows high flexibility in terms of data transferring. HTTP is easy to use; it is supported by popular programming languages. Developers choose to use HTTP for creation of different purpose applications. Mostly HTTP is used for creation of web application and application which work in the Internet. With development of 3G and 4G networks, IoT (Internet of Things) gains its popularity, thus many devices can be communicate over the Internet.

Uninvestigatigated parts of general matters defining. There are many directions to decrease amount of HTTP traffic. However, investigation of headers of HTTP is not considered as one of the methods of decreasing amount of the HTTP traffic.

The research objective. We decided to concentrate our attention on HTTP headers to address the issue of HTTP traffic growth. Previous researches have shown that HTTP header can contain unnecessary data, which can be eliminated [3]. In the paper, we compare theoretically possible minimum configuration of HTTP header with HTTP headers received during the experiment. Many of previous researches are concentrated on HTTP protocol itself. However, we concentrate our attention on data, which is transferred using HTTP. We used web debugging tool to investigate the HTTP header.

The statement of basic materials. Under minimal HTTP header configuration, we understand amount of bytes required to deliver the information over HTTP. According to previous researches, HTTP/1.1 is the most popular version of the HTTP, which is used nowadays. All data captured during our experiment was transferred and received over HTTP/1.1 as well. Request and response message formats differ from each other.

Conclusions. In the paper, we identified the minimal HTTP header configuration, which can still be used to transfer valid HTTP messages. Our experimental data shows that header of the real HTTP traffic exceeds the minimal configuration of HTTP header.

However, we understand, that not every type of application, which work via HTTP, require a small HTTP header. Nevertheless, applications, which are installed and running on the mobile devices require additional attention to the amount of an HTTP traffic transferred.