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WebExpress: A client/intercept based system for optimizing Web browsing in a wireless environment

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Abstract

This paper describes an application model and software technology that makes it possible to run World Wide Web applications in wide area wireless networks. Web technology in conjunction with today's mobile devices (e.g., laptops, notebooks, personal digital assistants) and the emerging wireless technologies (e.g., digital cellular, packet radio, CDPD) offer the potential for unprecedented access to data and applications by mobile workers. Yet, the limited bandwidth, high latency, high cost, and poor reliability of today's wireless wide-area networks greatly inhibits (to the point of infeasibility) supporting such applications over wireless networks. This paper presents the Client/Intercept computational model that makes it possible to run such distributed applications efficiently in wide area wireless networks. Furthermore, it presents WebExpress, a client/intercept based system for optimizing Web browsing, that reduces data volume and latency of wireless communications by intercepting the HTTP data stream and performing various optimizations including: file caching, forms differencing, protocol reduction, and the elimination of redundant HTTP header transmission. This paper describes these optimizations and presents some experimental results.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. IBM Corporation (BRQA/502), P.O. Box 12195, RTP, NC, 27709, USA

    Barron C. Housel & David B. Lindquist

  2. Department of Computer Science, University of Cyprus, CY-1678, Nicosia, Cyprus

    George Samaras

Authors
  1. Barron C. Housel
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  2. George Samaras
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  3. David B. Lindquist
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Housel, B.C., Samaras, G. & Lindquist, D.B. WebExpress: A client/intercept based system for optimizing Web browsing in a wireless environment. Mobile Networks and Applications 3, 419–431 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1019109823270

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1019109823270

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