Serving embedded content via web applications: model, design and experimentation

Embedded systems such as smart cards or sensors are now widespread, but are often closed systems, only accessed via dedicated terminals. A new trend consists in embedding Web servers in small devices, making both access and application development easier. In this paper, we propose a TCP performance model in the context of embedded Web servers, and we introduce a taxonomy of the contents possibly served by Web applications. The main idea of this paper is to adapt the communication stack behavior to application contents properties. We propose a strategies set fitting with each type of content. The model allows to evaluate the benefits of our strategies in terms of time and memory charge. By implementing a real use case on a smart card, we measure the benefits of our proposals and validate our model. Our prototype, called Smews, makes a gap with state of the art solutions both in terms of performance and memory charge.