Browser Synchronization System for Supporting Elderly People and IT Shortfalls

In this paper, we propose a new browser synchronization system, which supports elderly people and IT shortfalls to learn how to use on-line shopping services from a support person on a remote site. A key feature of the proposed system is to synchronize browsers without a centralized server, and it works even if user terminals are placed behind a NAT device. In order to traverse the NAT, the proposed system uses a Simple Traversal of UDP through NATs (STUN) server and a mail server. In addition, a packet loss compensation method is implemented in order for the proposed system to avoid a mis-synchronization due to UDP packet losses. We have implemented the proposed system to Linux/Windows and Android tablets. From an evaluation of the proposed methods, it has been concluded that contents on browsers can be synchronized within a sufficiently short time.