IMOBILE: A PROXY-BASED PLATFORM FOR MOBILE SERVICES

1. IMOBILE: A PROXY-BASED PLATFORM FOR MOBILE SERVICES Author: Chung-Hwa Herman Rao, Yih-Farn Robin Chen, Di-Fa Chang and Ming-Feng Chen NETWORK SERVICES RESEARCH CENTER, AT&T LABS Presented by Pengpeng Lu

2. OUTLINE • OBJECTIVE • INTRODUCTION • ARCHITECTURE OF IMOBILE • LET ENGINE AND USER/DEVICE PROFILES • SUMMARY • FUTURE WORK

3. OBJECTIVE • PROVIDE A PERSONAL AGENT ON THE NETWORK THAT ALLOWS MOBILE USERS TO ACCESS ALL SERVICES. - NO MATTER WHERE THEY ARE. - NO MATTER WHAT DEVICES.

4. INTRODUCTION DIFFERENT DEVICE AND PROTOCOLS DO NOT COMMUNICATE EACH OTHER EASILY: - Palm PDA - Cell Phone - Email Devices - Pocket PCs MOBILE USERS: - DIFFERENT NEEDS, MOTIVATION AND CAPABILITIES FROM WIRELINE USERS - MULTI-TASKING MODE - VERY TASK-ORIENTED

5. INTRODUCTION FIGURE 1. Accessing iMobile Services Through Various Devices and Networks.

6. ARCHITECTURE OF IMOBILE FIGURE 2. Architecture of iMobile

7. FIGURE 3. Architecture of iMobile

8. DEVLET A DEVLET PROVIDES A PROTOCOL INTERFACE TO A DEVICE ON A PARTICULAR ACCESS NETWORK. SUPPORT: SMS protocol IMAP email protocol AIM protocol ICQ protocol Telnet protocol WAP protocol HTTP protocol

9. DEVLET • EACH DEVLET INTERACTS WITH THE LET ENGINE IN • A STANDARD WAY: • RECEIVE EACH REQUEST AS A CHARACTER STREAM • SEND THE CHARACTER STREAM, INTERPREDTED AS • AN IMOBILE COMMAND AND ASSOCIATED • PARAMETERS TO THE LET ENGINE • RETURNS RESULTS IN A MIME TYPE ACCEPTABLE • BY THE RECEIVING DEVICE (DETERMINED BY THE • CORRESPONDING DEVICE PROFILE STORED AT THE • LET ENGINE

10. DEVLET EACH COMMAND INVOKES AN APPLET THAT CORRESPONDS TO A SERVICE WITH A SET OF SERVICE PARAMETERS • EXAMPLES • TO ACCESS THE STOCK PRICE OF AT&T (T): • quote T • TO FORWARD THE RESULT TO herman@research.att.com • forward mail: herman@research.att.com quote T

11. INFOLET RETRIEVE OR WRITE TO AN INFORMATION SPACE USING AN ACCESS PROTOCOL APPROPRIATE FOR THE INFORMATION SOURCE AVAILABLE INFORMATION SPACES: - Stock quote, weather, flight schedule, etc (Access websites) Example: An AIM client of YihFarn talks to an iMoible AIM agent, issued the “flight 008” command to get flight information on the NorthWest airline and received the concise output that includes time and gate information of each leg of the flight

12. INFOLET • Mapping from the flight command • to the NorthWest airline • Invoke necessary transcoding services • to map to an appropriate format FIGURE . Accessing Flight Info Through iMobile.

13. INFOLET INFORMATION SPACES (Continued): - Corporate Database (Accessed through the JDBC and ODBC interfaces) iMobile hosts a JDBC infolet that allows mobile users to access or update enterprise database information (employee data, marketing/sales data, etc) through SQL-like queries. - Network/Infrastructure Resources (Accessed through the CORBA interfaces) iMobile hosts a CORBA infolet that allows mobile users to request services from CORBA objects.

14. INFOLET INFORMATION SPACES (Continued): - Mobile Control of X10 Home Network Devices iMobile hosts an X10 infolet that controls home network devices connected to its server machine. - Emailson Mail Servers iMobile supports and IMAP infolet called inbox that can query and view a user’s email account.

15. APPLET IMPLEMENT BUSINESS OR APPLICATION LOGIC BY PROCESSING CONTENTS FROM DIFFERENT SOURCES AND RELAYING RESULTS TO VARIOUS DESTINATION DEVICES An Applet may simply sends a message from one device to another without using any information sources OR Have complex interaction with other infolets.

16. LET ENGINE • RECEIVE COMMANDS FROM DEVICES, TRANSLATE • THE COMMANDS ACCORDING TO USER ALIASES AND • PROFILES, AND THEN FORWARDS THE SERVICE • REQUEST TO THE RIGHT APPLET OR INFOLET • INVOKE THE APPROPRIATE TRANSCODING SERVICE • TO CONVERT RESULTS RETRUNED FROM INFOLETS • OR APPLETS TO A FORMAT APPROPRIATE FOR THE • TARGET DEVICE • ALL DEVLETS, INFOLETS, AND APPLETS MUST BE • REGISTERED AT THE LET ENGINE FIRST BEFORE • COMMUNICATIONS WITH OTHER AGENTS CAN • OCCUR

17. DEVICE PROFILE EVERY DEVICE MUST REGISTER ITS PROFILE INFORMATION WITH THE LET ENGINE FIRST DEVICE NAME: protocol:acct_id A DEVICE PROFILE IS A LIST OF ATTRIBUTE-VALUE PAIRS: dev.format.accept: determine what MIME type the device is allowed to accept e.g.: dev.format.accept=text/plain dev.page.size=230

18. DEVICE PROFILE (CONTINUED) EVERY DEVLET IS MODELED AS A SPECIAL DEVICE IT REQUIRES MORE INFORMATION IN THE DEVICE PROFILE TO TELL IMOBILE HOW AND WHEN TO ACCESS THIS DEVICE. e.g.: mail.store.checktime=10000

19. DEVICE to USER MAPPING EACH DEVICE HAS TO BE MAPPED TO A REGISTERED IMOBILE USER. REASONS: - LIMITING ACCESS TO LEGITIMATE IMOBILE USERS ONLY - PERSONALIZE A SERVICE BASED ON THE USER PROFILE A typical device-to-user map: sms: +886936731826=herman sms: +19087376842=chen mail:dchang@research.att.com=difa aim:webciao=chen …

20. USER PROFILE A typical iMobile user profile: name=Robin Chen Password=xf2gbH3 # command aliases default=$mail.1 sms.cmd.q=quote # my addresses sms.cmd.sn=sitenews sms.1=sms:+19087376842 # address aliases mail.1=mail:chen@research.att.com sms.addr.cc=aim:chrischen mail.2=mail:imobile@mobile.att.net mail.all=$mail.1, $mail.2 aim.1=aim:webciao

21. SUMMARY • IMIBILE INTRODUCES THREE ABSTRACTIONS ON TOP OF AN AGNET-BASED PROXY: • DEVLET TO INTERACT WITH VARIOUS • ACCESS DEVICES AND PROTOCOLS • INFOLETS TO ACCESS MULTIPLLE • INFORMATION SPACES • APPLETS TO IMPLEMENT APPLICATION AND • SERVICE LOGIC • THE LET ENGINE ARBITRATES THE COMMUNICATIONS AMONG DEVLETS, APPLETS, AND INFOLETS, IT MAINTAINS USER AND DEVICE PROFILES, WHICH ARE USED TO PROVIDE PERSONALIZED SERVICES AND TO PERFORM TRANSCODING BEFORE RETURNING CONTENTS TO RECEIVING DEVICES.

22. FUTURE WORK INTEGRATE IMOBILE WITH LOCATION SERVICES TO FURTHER REDUCE THE PARAMETERS (ZIP CODE, LONGITUDE, LATITUDE, ETC.) THAT A MOBILE USER IS REQUIRED TO ENTER TO ACCESS USEFUL INFORMATION EXPERIMENT WITH VOICE XML TECHNOLOGOES TO PROVIDE A VOICE-BASED DEVLET FOR INFORMATION RETRIEVALS