Compressing Data Traffic with an Active Image Transcoding Proxy in a Local Consumer Environment

This article presents a system for transcoding and compressing images on-the-fly before delivering it to the client so as to reduce the data stream and thus improve the load times in a local home environment. We lay down the framework for the usage of a compression server that acts as a proxy, and works alongside the home router in the network infrastructure. A properly implemented proxy server does not threaten the user's privacy because all compression happens locally on a separately attached device, that would also take upon itself the processing-strain of each and every device to render images. Such an approach allows the entire local network to experience reduced traffic, and faster loading times thereby freeing up some part of the bandwidth under use.