Mobile phones are becoming commonplace for consuming Internet content and services. However, availability, affordability, and quality of the supposedly ubiquitous cellular network infrastructure may be limited, so that delay-tolerant web access via WLAN hotspots becomes an interesting alternative, even in urban areas. In this paper we explore mobile web access using asynchronous messaging via WLAN hotspots: for nodes directly connected to an access point and nodes relying on others for message

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... orwarding. We investigate different routing and caching approaches using real-world access point locations in Helsinki. We find that a significant number of requests can be satisfied without requiring an always-on infrastructure, provided that users are willing to tolerate some response delay; this allows offloading traffic from the cellular network. We also report on our prototype implementation of mobile DTN-based web browsing.