TeleWeb: Loosely connected access to the World Wide Web

The design of TeleWeb is described, a system that provides an asynchronous, email-style of browsing in which users can work disconnected from a cache of documents, or trade off communication cost against information needs.

Abstract

The development of the World Wide Web (WWW) has made people reliant on continuous, high-speed, low-cost networks in order to get work done. Ideally, one should be able to browse the Web anytime, anywhere, whether connected to such a network or not. This paper describes the design of TeleWeb, a system we are building to support this goal. We believe that fine-grained cost control is crucial and have developed a “reactive architecture” that supports user-specified adaptation under various operating conditions. There are four key features to TeleWeb's architecture: costs are made visible to the user through annotated HTML; budget monitoring warns the user when operations exceed pre-specified limits; actions may be postponed and later triggered when conditions are met; and finally, user customization and system configuration values may automatically adapt according to the changing conditions of use. These mechanisms work together to provide an asynchronous, email-style of browsing in which users can work disconnected from a cache of documents, or trade off communication cost against information needs.