SPRINGER BRIEFS IN COMPUTER SCIENCE Bo Zhao · Byung Chul Tak Guohong Cao Mobile Web Browsing Using the Cloud SpringerBriefs in Computer Science Series Editors Stan Zdonik Peng Ning Shashi Shekhar Jonathan Katz Xindong Wu Lakhmi C. Jain David Padua Xuemin Shen Borko Furht V. S. Subrahmanian Martial Hebert Katsushi Ikeuchi Bruno Siciliano For further volumes: http://www.springer.com/series/10028 Bo Zhao • Byung Chul Tak Guohong Cao Mobile Web Browsing Using the Cloud 123 Bo Zhao Byung Chul Tak Guohong Cao Department of Computer Science and Engineering The Pennsylvania State University University Park, PA USA ISSN 2191-5768 ISSN 2191-5776 (electronic) ISBN 978-1-4614-8102-7 ISBN 978-1-4614-8103-4 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-8103-4 Springer New York Heidelberg Dordrecht London Library of Congress Control Number: 2013941911 References to various copyrighted trademarks, servicemarks, marks and registered marks owned by the respective corporations and/or connected subsidiaries may appear in this book. We use the names, logos, and images only in an editorial fashion with no intention of infringement of the trademark. Ó The Author(s) 2014 This work is subject to copyright. 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Violations are liable to prosecution under the respective Copyright Law. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. While the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication, neither the authors nor the editors nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions that may be made. The publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com) Preface Smartphones have become a key element in providing greater user access to the mobile Internet. Many complex applications which used to be limited to PCs, have been developed and operated on smartphones. These applications extend the functionalities of smartphones, making them more convenient for users to be connected. However, they also greatly increase the power consumption of smartphones, making users frustrated with long delays in Web browsing. This book surveys existing techniques to address these problems, and shows that one key reason for the delays and high power consumption is due to the local com- putational limitation at the smartphone (e.g., running java scripts or flash). To address this issue, we introduce an architecture called Virtual Machine-based Proxy (VMP), to shift the computing from smartphones to the VMP which may reside in the cloud. The book illustrates the feasibility of deploying the proposed VMP system in 3G networks through a prototype using Xen virtual machines (in cloud) and Android Phones with ATT UMTS network. This book also includes cloud techniques to address scalability issues, resource management techniques to optimize the performance of the VMs on the proxy side, compression techniques to further reduce the bandwidth consumption, and adaptation techniques to address poor network conditions at the smartphone. March 2013 Bo Zhao Byung Chul Tak Guohong Cao v Contents 1 Introduction ........................................ 1 2 Related Work ....................................... 5 2.1 Existing Work on Power Saving . 5 2.2 Thin-Client Based Approach. 6 2.3 Proxy Based Approach. 7 2.4 Cloud Based Approach. 8 3 Motivation.......................................... 11 3.1 Delay Issues in Web Browsing . 11 3.2 Power Consumption of Web Browsing in 3G . 14 4 Virtual Machine Based Proxy............................ 17 4.1 System Architecture. 17 4.2 Communication Mechanisms. 19 4.2.1 Features for Opening Web Pages . 19 4.2.2 Supporting User Interactions . 19 4.2.3 Compressions . 20 4.2.4 Adaptation Techniques . 20 4.3 Design of VMP at the Service Provider . 20 4.3.1 VM Management . 20 4.3.2 Managing VM Image . 22 4.3.3 Scalability Issues . 22 4.3.4 Implementation Issues . 25 4.4 Security and Privacy Issues . 26 4.4.1 Security-Enhanced Model for the VMP Architecture . 27 4.4.2 Asymmetric Encryption and Authentication System . 28 4.4.3 Trusted Computing Module . 29 4.4.4 Antivirus Scanning Service . 30 4.4.5 System Overhead . 30 4.5 Discussions. 31 4.5.1 Supporting Interactive Applications. 31 4.5.2 Deployment Issues . 32 vii viii Contents 5 Performance Measurements ............................. 33 5.1 The Experimental Setup . 33 5.2 The Web Page Benchmark . 34 5.3 Experimental Results on Delay . 35 5.3.1 Average Delay for Opening Benchmark Web Pages . 36 5.3.2 Effects of Transmitting Multiple Screens of Data . 38 5.3.3 Effects of Data Compression . 39 5.4 Experimental Results on Power Consumption . 40 5.4.1 Power Consumption of the Smartphone Browser . 41 5.4.2 Power Consumption with Web Page Benchmark. 45 5.4.3 The Benefit of Performing Antivirus Scanning with VMP . 47 6 Conclusions and Future Research Directions................. 49 References ............................................ 51 Chapter 1 Introduction Abstract This chapter introduces the technical challenges arising from supporting web browsing on smartphones. For ease of understanding and further discussions, we briefly describe existing techniques on reducing the access delay and power consumption of smartphones. Then, we propose a new architecture, called Virtual Machine-based Proxy (VMP), which aims to shift the computationally intensive web browsing tasks from smartphones to reduce the delays and power consumption. Finally, we highlight the advantages of the VMP architecture and provide detailed organization of the book. Due to the arrival in the market of a new generation of improved smartphones, with large screens, improved user interfaces, and advanced features such as GPS, smart- phones have become a key element in providing greater user access to the mobile Internet. For several years, the demand for smartphones has outpaced the remain- der of the mobile phone market. Approximately half of the U.S. mobile consumers own smartphones and could account for nearly 70 % of all U.S. mobile devices in 2013 [1]. Different from traditional mobile phones, smartphones incorporate mobile oper- ating systems such as Google’s Android, Apple’s iOS, or others, leading to more capability than traditional mobile phones. Many complex applications which used to be limited to Personal Computers (PCs), have been developed and operated on smartphones. These applications extend the functionalities of smartphones, making them more convenient for users to connect to the Internet; however, the trade-off for greater capability is a greatly increased workload leading to increased power consumption. Smartphones, powered by battery, create a major concern for the battery’s life in the mobile communication industry. Unfortunately, the rate at which battery performance improves has been much slower than the development of the devices’ capabilities [2]. Aside from major breakthroughs, significant improvement in the foreseeable future is doubtful. Rather than improving the amount of energy a power source contains, this research explores an alternative: carefully designing B. Zhao et al., Mobile Web Browsing Using the Cloud,1 SpringerBriefs in Computer Science, DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4614-8103-4_1, © The Author(s) 2014 2 1 Introduction communication protocols that allow smartphones to perform expected functions and the similar services while minimizing overall power consumption. Likewise, to respond to users’ frustrations from long delays during web browsing with smart- phones, improved design to protocols reduce the impediment. Some research has focused on optimizing batteries’ power [3–5]; however, limi- tation of these studies is for reducing power consumption of one component of the smartphone such as the display, the wireless interface [5], or the network protocol. From the web server’s perspective, smartphones receive the same consideration as other computing devices such as desktop computers in offices despite a fundamental difference between smartphones and desktop PCs such as display size and power source. To address the fundamental difference between smartphones and desktop PCs, some web servers adopt transcoding techniques [6, 7], which treat smartphones differently from other computers. For example, if the transmitted request