Abstract: Systems and techniques are described for calculating performance improvement achieved and/or expected to be achieved by optimizing a network connection. Network characteristics can be measured for non-optimized network connections. Next, the network characteristics can be analyzed to obtain a set of non-optimized connection groups, wherein each non-optimized connection group corresponds to non-optimized network connections that have similar network characteristics. Network characteristics for an optimized network connection can be measured. Next, a non-optimized connection group can be identified based on the network characteristics that were measured for the optimized network connection. A performance improvement metric can then be calculated based on a throughput of the optimized network connection and corresponding throughputs of non-optimized network connections in the identified non-optimized connection group.