Characterizing Alert and Browse Services for Mobile Clients

There is a fair amount of evidence that suggests that Internet access from wirelessly-connected mobile handheld devices is gaining popularity. However, there haven't been too many studies that have focused solely on analyzing the wireless Internet. In this paper, we study the notification and browse services provided by a large commercial web site designed specifically for users who access it via their cell-phones and PDAs. Unlike previous web studies that have analyzed browse services provided over wired networks, we focus primarily on browse and notification services provided over wireless channels. Specifically, we analyze the notification and browser traces to understand the system load, the type of content accessed, and user behavior. We discuss the implications of our findings for techniques such as multicast, query caching and optimization, and transport protocol design.