Amazon Silk

Motivation:
When a traditional browser requests a web page, the browser has to complete a series of resource-intensive, client-side processes before it can display the page. All the client-server interactions can add up to slow page loads, especially given the limited resources of a mobile device and the increasing size and complexity of modern websites.

Amazon Silk is a web browser developed by Amazon for Kindle Fire line of tablets and Fire Phone. The architecture is designed for both rapid page loading and extended engagement with the page. With Amazon Silk, much of the processing behind page rendering can be performed in the Amazon cloud. Amazon Silk is designed to create a faster, more responsive mobile browsing experience.

Main Points:

• Amazon Silk has the vast capacity of Amazon Web Services (AWS) behind it. Using AWS, Amazon Silk analyzes aggregate web traffic patterns, preprocesses pages, and applies predictive algorithms to determine the fastest way to deliver content to the device.

• To minimize latency and page load times, Amazon Silk routes requests through remote proxy servers powered by Amazon EC2. These cloud servers provide high-performance connection speeds and computing power not normally available to a mobile form factor.

• Amazon Silk can learn from web traffic patterns and use this learning to improve the individual user experience.

• Caching on the Amazon Silk back end is one of the primary mechanisms Silk uses to accelerate page loading.

• Amazon Silk supports SSL communication between the device client on the Kindle Fire and origin servers. 

• Amazon Silk supports the Do Not Track (DNT) header request field, an HTTP header field that specifies a user preference about data collection. Many web sites collect information about user browsing behavior, and with the DNT field users can opt out of such data collection.

• Amazon Silk provides broad support for the emerging HTML5 standard and for related media features.

Trade-offs/Comments:

• Because every site, everything the users do online through Silk will go through Amazon. The most concerns should be related to privacy problem. Silk can log URLs for the pages it serves, as well as record the originating IP addresses to troubleshoot and diagnose technical issues, which would identify the network used by the browser.

• Amazon Silk supports SSL communication between the device client on the Kindle Fire and origin servers. For enhanced privacy and security, SSL traffic is not routed through Silk remote proxies in the Amazon Cloud, and they don't collect any metrics regarding web page resources downloaded using SSL connections. That means users' SSL browsing is not accelerated by the proxy servers.