System and method for improving internet communication by using intermediate nodes
A method for fetching a content from a web server to a client device is disclosed, using tunnel devices serving as intermediate devices. The client device accesses an acceleration server to receive a list of available tunnel devices. The requested content is partitioned into slices, and the client device sends a request for the slices to the available tunnel devices. The tunnel devices in turn fetch the slices from the data server, and send the slices to the client device, where the content is reconstructed from the received slices. A client device may also serve as a tunnel device, serving as an intermediate device to other client devices. Similarly, a tunnel device may also serve as a client device for fetching content from a data server. The selection of tunnel devices to be used by a client device may be in the acceleration server, in the client device, or in both. The partition into slices may be overlapping or non-overlapping, and the same slice (or the whole content) may be fetched via multiple tunnel devices.
1. A computer-readable medium that is non-transitory storage medium for use with a group of mobile devices, wherein each of the mobile devices in the group is associated with a respective geographical location, the computer-readable medium contains instructions which, when executed by one or more hardware processors in a first server that is not a client device, cause performance of steps comprising:
identifying, by the first server, a first geographical location that comprises a first country or a first city;
identifying, by the first server, a first part of a content;
selecting, by the first server, a first mobile device from the group that is associated with the identified first geographical location;
sending, by the first server to the first mobile device over the Internet, a first request for the identified first part of the content;
receiving, by the first server from the first mobile device over the Internet, in response to the sending of the first request, the first part;
identifying, by the first server, a second geographical location that is distinct from the first geographical location and comprises a second country or a second city;
identifying, by the first server, a second part of the content;
selecting, by the first server, a second mobile device from the group that is associated with the identified second geographical location;
sending, by the first server to the second mobile device over the Internet, a second request for the identified first part of the content;
receiving, by the first server from the second mobile device over the Internet, in response to the sending of the second request, the second part;
identifying, by the first server, a third geographical location that is distinct from the first and second geographical locations and comprises a third country or a third city;
identifying, by the first server, a third part of the content;
selecting, by the first server, a third mobile device from the group that is associated with the identified third geographical location;
sending, by the first server to the third mobile device over the Internet, a third request for the identified third part of the content;
receiving, by the first server from the third mobile device over the Internet, in response to the sending of the third request, the third part; and
constructing, at the first server, at least part of the content from the received first, second, and third parts.
2. The computer-readable medium of claim 1 , wherein the first part is identified by a first identifier, wherein the second part is identified by a second identifier, wherein the third part is identified by a third identifier, wherein the first request comprises the first identifier, wherein the second request comprises the second identifier, and wherein the third request comprises the third identifier.
3. The computer-readable medium of claim 2 , wherein the first identifier comprises a first Uniform Resource Locator (URL), wherein the second identifier comprises a second URL, and wherein the third identifier comprises a third URL.
4. The computer-readable medium of claim 2 , wherein the steps further comprising receiving, by the first server from a client device over the Internet, the first, second, or third identifier.
5. The computer-readable medium of claim 1 , wherein each of the first, second, and third mobile devices comprises, or consists of, a respective client device.
6. The computer-readable medium of claim 1 , wherein the identifying of the first geographical location comprises receiving, by the first server from a client device over the Internet, the first geographical location, wherein the identifying of the second geographical location comprises receiving, by the first server from the client device over the Internet, the second geographical location, and wherein the identifying of the third geographical location comprises receiving, by the first server from the client device over the Internet, the third geographical location.
7. The computer-readable medium of claim 1 , wherein the steps further comprising sending, by a first server to the client device over the Internet, the constructed at least part of the content.
8. The computer-readable medium of claim 1 , wherein each of the mobile devices in the group comprises, or consists of, a respective cellular telephone device.
9. The computer-readable medium of claim 1 , wherein the steps further comprising storing, operating, or using, by the first server, a server operating system.
10. The computer-readable medium of claim 9 , wherein the server operating system consists of, comprises, or is based on, Microsoft Windows Server®, Linux, UNIX, or any combination thereof.
11. The computer-readable medium of claim 9 , wherein the server operating system consists of, comprises, or is based on, Microsoft Windows Server® 2003 R2, 2008, 2008 R2, 2012, or 2012 R2 variant, Linux™ or GNU/Linux based Debian GNU/Linux, Debian GNU/kFreeBSD, Debian GNU/Hurd, Fedora™, Gentoo™, Linspire™, Mandriva, Red Hat® Linux, SuSE, and Ubuntu®, UNIX® variant Solaris™, AIX®, Mac OS X, FreeBSD®, OpenBSD, NetBSD®, or any combination thereof.
12. The computer-readable medium of claim 1 , wherein the first, second, or third request comprises a HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) request.
13. The computer-readable medium of claim 1 , wherein the first, second, or third request comprises a HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) request.
14. The computer-readable medium of claim 1 , wherein the first part is stored in a web server.
15. The computer-readable medium of claim 14 , wherein the first, second, and third parts are stored in the web server.
16. The computer-readable medium of claim 1 , wherein the first and second parts are stored in different web servers.
17. The computer-readable medium of claim 1 , wherein the sending of the first request comprises sending of the first request to a web server via the first mobile device.
18. The computer-readable medium of claim 1 , wherein the receiving of the first part comprises receiving of the first part from a web server via the first mobile device.
19. The computer-readable medium of claim 1 , wherein the content comprises, or is part of, a publicly-accessed web-site or web-page stored in a web server.
20. The computer-readable medium of claim 1 , wherein each of the first, second, and third parts comprises, or is part of, a respective web-page or a part thereof.
21. The computer-readable medium of claim 1 , wherein each of the first, second, and third parts comprises, or is part of, a respective object of a web-page.
22. The computer-readable medium of claim 21 , wherein the object comprises, or consists of, a Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) object.
23. The computer-readable medium of claim 22 , wherein the object comprises, or consists of, an HTTP addressed object.
24. The computer-readable medium of claim 1 , wherein the content comprises, or consists of, a file or program.
25. The computer-readable medium of claim 1 , wherein a communication with the first, second, or third mobile device is based on, or uses, a respective HTTP persistent connection.
26. The computer-readable medium of claim 1 , for use with a list of Internet-Protocol (IP) addresses in IPV4 or IPV6 form that is stored in the first server, wherein the selecting of each of the first, second, and third mobile devices comprises respectively selecting the first, second, and third IP addresses from the list that are the addresses of the respective device.
27. The computer-readable medium of claim 26 , wherein the steps further comprising selecting of the IP addresses from the list further comprises randomly selecting IP addresses from the list.
28. The computer-readable medium of claim 26 , for use with a database that associates each of the IP addresses in the list with a respective geographical location, wherein the selecting of the IP addresses from the list comprises selecting based on, or using, the associated respective geographical locations.
29. The computer-readable medium of claim 1 , wherein the steps further comprising establishing a connection by the first server with at least one of the first, second, or third mobile devices using TCP, and wherein the connection is established by performing ‘Active OPEN’ or ‘Passive OPEN’.
30. The computer-readable medium of claim 1 , wherein at least one of the parts includes, consists of, or comprises, a part or whole of text data, audio data, voice data, multimedia data, video data, image data, music data, or any combination thereof.
31. The computer-readable medium of claim 1 , wherein the steps further comprising periodically receiving, by the first server over the Internet, from the first, second, or third mobile device, a message that comprises a status of the respective mobile device.
32. The computer-readable medium of claim 31 , wherein the message comprises, or is based on, an ‘heartbeat’ message.
33. The computer-readable medium of claim 31 , wherein a time period between two or more received messages is at least 10 milliseconds, 20 milliseconds, 30 milliseconds, 50 milliseconds, 100 milliseconds, 1 second, 2 seconds, 3 seconds, 5 seconds, 10 seconds, 20 seconds, 30 seconds, 50 seconds, 100 seconds, 1 minute, 2 minutes, 3 minutes, 5 minutes, or 10 minutes.
34. The computer-readable medium of claim 1 , further comprising periodically receiving, by the first server from each of the mobile devices in the group over the Internet, a respective resource utilization.
35. The computer-readable medium of claim 34 , wherein the resource comprises, or consists of, a hardware component in the respective mobile device.
36. The computer-readable medium of claim 35 , wherein the hardware component comprises, or consists of, a processor or Central Processing Unit (CPU) operation in the respective mobile device.
37. The computer-readable medium of claim 36 , wherein the resource utilization is based on, or comprises, the processor or CPU time of executing one or more threads or processes, wherein the resource utilization is based on, or comprises, the processor or CPU idling time, or wherein the resource utilization is based on, or comprises, the processor or CPU executing a system idle process.
38. The computer-readable medium of claim 35 , wherein the hardware component comprises, or consists of, a memory in the respective device, and wherein the resource utilization is based on, or comprises, an amount of used or unused location or space of the memory.
39. The computer-readable medium of claim 35 , wherein the resource comprises, or consists of, input or output capability.
40. The computer-readable medium of claim 35 , wherein the resource comprises, or consists of, communication bandwidth of communication with another apparatus over the Internet.
41. The computer-readable medium of claim 40 , wherein the resource comprises, or consists of, communication bandwidth of communication with the first server over the Internet, or wherein the resource utilization is based on, or according to, IETF RFC 2914.