The Socket Store: An App Model for the Application-Network Interaction

Abstract

A developer of mobile or desktop applications is responsible for implementing the network logic of his software. Nonetheless: i) Developers are not network specialists, while pressure for emphasis on the visible application parts places the network logic out of the coding focus. Moreover, computer networks undergo evolution at paces that developers may not follow. ii) From the network resource provider point of view, marketing novel services and involving a broad audience is also challenge for the same reason. Moreover, the objectives of end-user networking logic are neither clear nor uniform. This constitutes the central optimization of network resources an additional challenge. As a solution to these problems, we propose the Socket Store. The Store is a marketplace containing end-user network logic in modular form. The Store modules act as intelligent mediators between the end-user and the network resources. Each module has a clear, specialized objective, such as connecting two clients over the Internet while avoiding transit networks suspicious for eavesdropping. The Store is populated and peer-reviewed by network specialists, whose motive is the visibility, practical applicability and monetization potential of their work. A developer first purchases access to a given socket module. Subsequently, he incorporates it to his applications under development, obtaining state-of-the-art performance with trivial coding burden. A full Store prototype is implemented and a critical data streaming module is evaluated as a driving case.