WOD - Proxy-based web object delivery service

With the tremendous growth of World Wide Web (WWW), the door has been opened to a multitude of services and information for even the most casual of users. Today, many wireless and mobile devices are being produced to provide access to this information, and the capabilities of these devices can vary depending on characteristics such as physical memory, storage space, and network speed. In the future, it is expected to see a rich variety of devices that can browse the WWW, and any given user is likely to own more than one type. When a user browses the WWW by small handy devices, such as PDAs or mobile phones with low network bandwidth, the storage space limitation and long download time make a user unable to download large-size web objects such as software zip files. One possible solution is for the user to memorize the URL of the desired web object, and download it when he reaches his home or office computer, but this is extremely inconvenient, and in most cases highly impractical. In this paper, we propose that using a proxy-based web object delivery system is a much more convenient and efficient solution. The proposed system is actually an HTTP proxy server that automatically checks all the requested web objects according to user-defined rules. If one or more rules are found to match, and the web object needs to be delivered to the user's account, the proposed system does some translations for the web object depending on its Content Type, and then delivers it via the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) or File Transfer Protocol (FTP). Users need merely set up the rules, and the web objects can proceed to be sent to their email or ftp site. There it can be downloaded at the user's leisure in high speed network environments such as at home or at one's office. In addition, a scheduling mechanism has been designed in order to enhance performance and improve the quality of service (QoS) for the users. We have tested the proposed system on the Windows platform, and have also evaluated it by a Pocket PC emulator.