With the present ubiquity of small computing devices such as smart phones, most people carry one or two lightweight computers with them at all times. In addition, these devices often carry a variety of sensors, including cameras, microphones, GPS units and accelerometers. The way that these devices travel with us throughout every day life offers opportunities for context-aware applications to use local information. However, many of the programs that take advantage of this information require more intensive computational or storage capabilities than these lightweight devices can offer.
The Smart Proxy Architecture takes advantage of local computing resources to move computation off of the local devices while maintaining very low latency. With this system architecture, lightweight devices carried by the user can be used exclusively as I/O devices. At the same time, we avoid the time delays seen in traditional thin client systems. The Smart Proxy Architecture offers the performance advantages of local systems and the performance capabilities of server or desktop system, while using lightweight devices the user is already carrying around in daily life.
We offer a concrete demonstration of the Smart Proxy Architecture by using it to improve the performance of VNC. By using the Smart Proxy to request display updates at a constant rate, we can mitigate the effects of network delays on VNC performance. This results in more display updates per second, and better user-perceived display quality. Our solution requires no modification to the existing VNC application code.
Cynthia Taylor is a third-year PhD student at UCSD working with Joe Pasquale on systems and networking.