Very Low Bandwidth (Marine) Web Surfing A Fault-Tolerant Content Streaming Web Browsing Solution

Abstract

Satellite connections are often the only option for Internet connectivity in remote or isolated regions. One low-cost example is the Iridium GO! satellite Internet device, with a bandwidth of just 2.4 kbit/s, at which many web pages would take several hours to load. Furthermore, satellite Internet is prone to connection issues and packet loss, increasing loading times even further. The possibility of enabling basic web browsing over such very slow connections is investigated. As a proof of concept, a prototype functioning under these conditions was developed. The prototype consists of a performance enhancing proxy server, a browser client, and a protocol. In the prototype certain content is filtered and rendered into plain text. This text is then streamed in smaller parts to the client. The prototype was tested with Iridium GO! and compared to some similar software solutions. The tests show that the proposed solution is both reliable and sufficient for basic web browsing on very low bandwidth. The prototype is a good foundation for further development of a browser for low bandwidth connections.