Tapster: Transparent Proxy Redirector for Mobile Computing

In mobile computing, the proxy-based software may access the proxy far from the visited network rather than the nearby proxy. Accordingly, the proxy-based software’s communication hardly gets advantages from the proxy and may suffer disturbances. We propose the Tapster as the transparent proxy redirector for mobile computing. The Tapster can automatically redirect applications’ requests to a nearby proxy without software configuration and modification. Accordingly, developers can focus on designing their applications without considering mobility and compatibility issues. The Tapster supports various network applications not merely WWW applications. Besides, the Tapster works at the mobile device to maintain security mechanisms, make the optimal communication path, and mitigate the load of network devices. We implement the Tapster in Windows XP and have experiments. The experiments show that (1) the Tapster has the negligible overhead, (2) the Tapster redirects applications’ requests to the nearby proxy to shorten communication delay, and (3) the Tapster works without software configuration and modification.