Extending the web to support personal network services

Abstract

Web browsers are able to access resources hosted anywhere in the world, yet content and features on personal devices remain largely inaccessible. Because of routing, addressing and security issues, web applications are unable to use local sensors, cameras and nearby network devices without resorting to proprietary extensions. Several projects have attempted to overcome these limitations yet none provide a full solution which embraces existing web concepts and scales across multiple devices. This paper describes an improved approach based on a combination of Web Intents for discovery, a custom local naming system and routing provided by the webinos framework. We show that it can be applied to existing services and that it can be used to enhance the state of the art in terms of privacy, consistency and flexibility.