Designing Communication Support for Mobile Hosts in Distributed Systems

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The rapidly expanding technology of cellular communications, wireless LAN, and satellite services will make it possible for users to access information anywhere and at anytime. In this environment, users will be mobile, use low powered computers, and communicate with the network over narrow bandwidth links. Such an environment introduces new challenges in the design of communication mechanisms due to constraints such as bandwidth, energy, cost, and the availability of computing resources due to host mobility. Hence, communication protocols should be designed for adaptability to changing environments brought by mobility. The research project will design and build support for mobile communications applications that explicitly take into account bandwidth limitations, energy limitations, and mobility using the following approaches: (1) The communication between the client and the server will be via an intermediary. Indirect interaction allows for optimization and development of specialized protocols for the wireless link and mobile host without having to change any protocol that is running on the fixed hosts. (2) Design environment aware communication primitives that will have access to the current environment state and also be notified about any changes. Thus, the type of communication to use can be tailored to the prevailing conditions.