Maximizing the GPRS through compression and caching

[Mikko Rauhala]

pe, 2008-07-04 kello 11:50 +1200, Ben Wilson kirjoitti:
> I wonder how feasible/effective it would be to do some extra realtime 
> compression on the GPRS data link?
> Make a connection to your home Linux box to terminate the compression 
> and connect you out to the internet from there.

Yeah I have often done something to this effect when surfing over GPRS;
do an ssh -C -L tunnel to a web proxy (or even nowadays use the generic
socks tunneling of ssh -C -D). That's an easy if not quite as generic
solution as full-blown compressed VPN. (I'm not sure if the dropbear
client supports -D, I don't think so; but anyway.)

For web browsing, there's more to be done by using a smart proxy on both
the client and the intermediary computer; see the ideas at
http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Server:WebProxy

I have some ugly and partially buggy (the Twisted integration part
spesifically) python code that does the HTML diffing (well, it splits on
> and identifies and transmits line ranges; uses ssh -C to provide usual
compression and encryption). I will probably debug it a bit at some
point here since hey, my Freerunner is shipping to me tomorrow. Perhaps
hopefully also add rdiff support for non-ML/text data (yes, I did check
the special algo was markedly more efficient for ML/text in several
interesting test cases at least). However, I'm not convinced I'll have
the motivation to polish it up as suitable for general consumption, and
would appreciate if an interested party stepped up (hell, even if they
didn't use my hacked-up code at all but rather just ran with the general
idea).

Oh yeah, the code? It's not up anywhere at this point, since it's not
useful as is. I can send to interested parties on request, and if I get
it functional, I'll certainly post it up.

-- 
Mikko Rauhala   - mjr at iki.fi     - <URL:http://www.iki.fi/mjr/>
Transhumanist   - WTA member     - <URL:http://www.transhumanism.org/>
Singularitarian - SIAI supporter - <URL:http://www.singinst.org/>