Why is my smartphone slow? On the fly diagnosis of underperformance on the mobile Internet

Abstract

The perceived end-to-end performance of the mobile Internet can be impacted by multiple factors including websites, devices, and network components. Constant changes in these factors and network complexity make identifying root causes of high latency difficult. In this paper, we propose a multidimensional diagnosis technique using passive IP flow data collected at ISPs for investigating factors that impact the performance of the mobile Internet. We implement and evaluate our technique over four days of data from a major US cellular provider's network. Our approach identifies several combinations of factors affecting performance. We investigate four combinations indepth to confirm the latency causes chosen by our technique. Our findings include a popular gaming website showing poor performance on a specific device type for over 50% of the flows and web browser traffic on older devices accounting for 99% of poorly performing traffic. Our technique can direct operators in choosing factors having high impact on latency in the mobile Internet.