Power-Efficient Persistent Web-based Cellular Connectivity

Web transactions are mostly stateless, and are driven by a request-response model originated by a web client (usually a browser). This works well for most types of web services. However, many types of web services require some form of two-way communications, such as browser-based instant messaging. This has lead to a proliferation of web services that employ polling techniques, which have several known drawbacks. Recently, WebSockets have been introduced as a browser-based solution that allows web applications to maintain a persistent TCP connection with a server. This enables web services to have true two-way messaging. Nevertheless, there are considerations web developers must take into account when leveraging WebSockets over cellular wireless access. This paper focuses on power consumption issues and proposes improvements to the WebSockets protocol.