WebPod: persistent Web browsing sessions with pocketable storage devices

We present WebPod, a portable system that enables mobile users to use the same persistent, personalized web browsing session on any Internet-enabled device. No matter what computer is being used, WebPod provides a consistent browsing session, maintaining all of a user's plugins, bookmarks, browser web content, open browser windows, and browser configuration options and preferences. This is achieved by leveraging rapid improvements in capacity, cost, and size of portable storage devices. WebPod provides a virtualization and checkpoint/restart mechanism that decouples the browsing environment from the host, enabling web browsing sessions to be suspended to portable storage, carried around, and resumed from the storage device on another computer. WebPod virtualization also isolates web browsing sessions from the host, protecting the browsing privacy of the user and preventing malicious web content from damaging the host. We have implemented a Linux WebPod prototype and demonstrate i...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: WWW
• Authors: Shaya Potter, Jason Nieh
• Keywords: Consistent Browsing Session, Internet Technology, Web Browsing Experience, Web Browsing Sessions, WWW 2005