On the Variation in Web Page Download Traffic across Different Client Types

Abstract

Modern web pages are diverse and complex. There is also a wide range of devices, operating systems, and browsers that users use to access these web pages. In this work, we study how web pages, and the traffic generated by their download, differ across these different client types. We conduct a preliminary study that performs a client-side analysis of the network traffic. We identify both expected and unexpected differences among similar web pages across different browser platforms that can be used to drive future internet measurement research and identify potential design decisions and/or bugs in modern browsers.