Performance Analysis of Secure Web Server Based on SSL

Abstract. In recent years, protocols have been developed to ensure se-cure communications over the Internet, e.g., the secure sockets layer (SSL) and secure electronic transaction (SET). Deployment of these pro-tocols incurs additional resource requirements at the client and server. This may have a negative impact on system performance. In this pa-per, we consider a scenario where users request information pages stored on a web server, and some of the requests require secure communica-tion. An analytic model is developed to study the performance of a web server based on SSL. In our model, the details of the client-server inter-actions found in a typical SSL session are represented explicitly. Input parameters to this model are obtained by measuring an existing SSL im-plementation. Numerical examples on the performance characteristics of SSL are presented.