Abstract
We are at the beginning of a shift in how content is created and exchanged
over the web. While content was previously created primarily by a small set of
entities, today, individual users -- empowered by devices like digital cameras
and services like online social networks -- are creating content that
represents a significant fraction of Internet traffic. As a result, content
today is increasingly generated and exchanged at the edge of the network.
Unfortunately, the existing techniques and infrastructure that are still used
to serve this content, such as centralized content distribution networks, are
ill-suited for these new patterns of content exchange. In this paper, we take a
first step towards addressing this situation by introducing WebCloud, a content
distribution system for online social networking sites that works by re-
purposing web browsers to help serve content. In other words, when a user
browses content, WebCloud tries to fetch it from one of that user's friend's
browsers, instead of from the social networking site. The result is a more
direct exchange of content ; essentially, WebCloud leverages the spatial and
temporal locality of interest between social network users. Because WebCloud is
built using techniques already present in many web browsers, it can be applied
today to many social networking sites. We demonstrate the practicality of
WebCloud with microbenchmarks, simulations, and a prototype deployment.
Users
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