A Combined LIFO-Priority Scheme for Overload Control of E-commerce Web Servers

Abstract: E-commerce Web-servers often face overload conditions during which revenue-generating requests may be dropped or abandoned due to an increase in the browsing requests. In this paper we present a simple, yet effective, mechanism for overload control of E-commerce Web-servers. We develop an E-commerce workload model that separates the browsing requests from revenue-generating transaction requests. During overload, we apply LIFO discipline in the browsing queues and use a dynamic priority model to service them. The transaction queues are given absolute priority over the browsing queues. This is called the LIFO-Pri scheduling discipline. Experimental results show that LIFO-Pri dramatically improves the overall Web-server throughput while also increasing the completion rate of revenue-generating requests. The Web-server was able to operate at nearly 60% of its maximum capacity even when offered load was 1.5 times its capacity. Further, when compared to a single queue FIFO system, there was a seven-fold increase in the number of completed revenue-generating requests during overload.