A User-Satisfaction Model for Web Transmissions

Using the existing internet protocol suite of HTTP over TCP, the user has little or no control over the progress of a web transfer he requested. We are developing a new protocol |WebTP | that includes the user in the transmission loop for a web transfer. WebTP optimizes the transport of a document from the sender to the receiver by taking into account factors like the contents of the document, the state of the network, the available resources at the client, and even the preferences of the user. We set up a model that captures the above information. Using the algorithms we developed, the receiver determines the optimal subset of objects to request and an optimal order of transport for these objects to maximize his utility.