1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the field of data communications for personal computers, and in particular to a system for dynamically collecting and displaying performance improvement information.
2. Related Art
The Internet is quickly becoming the preferred data communications medium for a broad class of computer users ranging from private individuals to large multinational corporations. Such users now routinely employ the Internet to access information, distribute information, correspond electronically, and even conduct personal conferencing. An ever-growing number of individuals, organizations and businesses have established a presence on the Internet through "Web pages" on the World-Wide Web (WWW).
At the same time that the Internet's popularity has been growing, the trend in personal computer (PC) design has been towards increased portability. This trend is best evidenced by the rapid growth in popularity of so-called "notebook" or "laptop" computers. Unfortunately, while PCs are becoming both more powerful and more portable, advances in communications infrastructure have not necessarily kept pace.
A primary limitation on the ability of personal computers to exploit the Internet to full benefit is a lack of sufficient communications bandwidth. Similar problems may be caused by such conditions as high network traffic, even for high-speed Internet access lines. Outside of an office environment, for example, PCs typically connect to the Internet via POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) or wireless modems at speeds ranging from 9.6 to 14.4 kbps. Such speeds are substantially lower than typical office LAN (Local Area Network) bandwidths. This limited data communications capability can translate into long user-visible latencies when interacting with the Internet.
A number of approaches have been (and are being) developed to address the problem of slow data communications in the context of Internet applications. One such approach involves using one or more intermediate devices, such as a "network proxy," arranged between a client device and content servers on the Internet to enhance client/network data communications. Network proxies may be used, for example, to cache network content so that subsequent client requests may be satisfied without having to re-retrieve a requested data object from a content server. Network proxies may also be used to "transcode" data objects into a form that may be downloaded more quickly. Such transcoding might comprise, for example, techniques such as data compression and image quality reduction which tend to reduce the amount of data to be downloaded.
As techniques for improving the performance of client/network data communications are being developed, it is desirable to be able to quantify the performance benefits derived from those techniques and to communicate such information to users. There is therefore a need for methods and apparatus to collect and display performance improvement information for a client device, including when performance improvement benefits are provided to a client device in a distributed manner by a plurality of other devices.