WebExpress: a system for optimizing Web browsing in a wireless environment

This paper describes software technology that makes it possible to nm Internet 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., 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 (even to the point of being unfeasible) supporting Web applications over wireless networks. WebExpress significantly reduces user cost and response time of wireless communications by intercepting the HITP data stream and performing various optimizations including: flle caching, forms differencing, protocol reduction, and the elimination of redundant HTTP header transmission. This paper describes these optimizations and presents some experiment results.