A NEW SCENARIO AND TECHNIQUES FOR CONTENT PREFETCHING IN 3G NETWORKS

Abstract Web content prefetching is a well-known technique whose aim is improv-ing the performance of web browsing. After a period of intensive study by the research community, the advent of wireless access technologies and 3G cellular systems in particular has brought back prefetching to the research front, and the suitability of this technique to optimise mo-bile wireless web sur¯ng is being assessed in many recent works. This paper identi¯es speci¯c issues in the application of prefetching to 3G networks, proposes a new scenario where prefetching can be e®ective, studies how this performance-oriented service can be integrated in the value chain (de¯ning a realistic method for charging for this service) and describes a trial scenario being developed over a real 3G network supporting OSA