Client-centered energy savings for concurrent HTTP connections

—In mobile devices, the wireless network interface card (WNIC) consumes a significant portion of overall system energy. One way to reduce energy consumed by a WNIC is to transition it to a lower-power sleep mode when data is not being received or transmitted. This paper investigates client-centered techniques for saving energy during web browsing. The basic idea is that the client predicts when packets will arrive, keeping the WNIC in high-power mode only when necessary. This is challenging because web browsing generally results in concurrent HTTP connections. To handle this, we maintain the state of each open connection on the client and then transition the WNIC to sleep mode when no connection is receiving data. Our technique is compatible with standard TCP and does not rely on any assistance from the server, a proxy, or IEEE 802.11b power-saving mode (PSM). Our technique combines the performance of regular TCP with nearly all the energy-saving of PSM during web downloads, and we ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: NOSSDAV
• Authors: Haijin Yan, Rupa Krishnan, Scott A. Watterson, David K. Lowenthal
• Keywords: NOSSDAV 2004, Operating Systems, Sleep Mode, Web Browsing, WNIC