References

1. Whatever, Whenever & In-between ! Persistent Applications Across Networks Systems Group The Computer Laboratory University of Cambridge PhD student: Aisha Elsafty amse2@cam.ac.uk Supervisor : Dr. David Greaves Overview Work in Progress User attention is by far the most precious resource in a world where computational and networking infrastructure is becoming cheaper and cheaper. In that same world, applications are expected to make optimum use of the dynamically changing resources offered by different environments as users move around. Applications thus have to be conscious of their environment making the best use of its resources. However, adapting to environment and reconfiguration should occur transparently from the user. To allow you to watch a match on a PDA in the car, then resume watching it on the big screen at home once you arrive there, without having to adjust channels and perhaps starting at the last scene you last watched, we look into behavior of mobile applications that persist across devices and networks. Data-Centric Model of Mobile Applications The model classifies the mobile application data according to persistence, update frequency and the credentials and access rights attached to them. Data items are thus classified as: volatile vs. persistent, dynamic vs. static and public vs. private. Application developers can tag data used by their applications according to this classification at design time. Approach We construct a Domain Specific Language for Mobile Applications. The data-centric model is used to construct primitives in this domain language. Such primitives handle the data housekeeping tasks. The application developer tags the data attributes of his application appropriately based on the model, and the domain specific language compiler generates the needed code for handling data persistence and updates. Research Questions ?How to sustain the application state as the application migrates and adapts to the environment? ?How can the augment the networking stack to support the persistence of applications as they move across different networks? ?How to enable the application developer to specify application response to presence or absence of certain resources? Current Stage We are looking into the definition of the domain specific language for mobile computing. We will proceed next to optimize the application layer of ambient network protocol for application migration. Related Work PebblesFramework Pebbles are independent software or hardware units. Orchestrated through an “application creation layer”, pebbles are invoked according to the user target and depending on available resources in the environment. The pebbles framework is a joint work between Cambridge’s computer laboratory and MIT’s computer science and Future Directions • Support application persistence based on heterogeneous network infrastructure technologies, such as ambient networking or IEEE 802.21. • Grant a dictated level of quality of service for an application as it migrates from one network to another. • Maintaining and authenticating user credentials across several networks and environments. • - Look at the potential of virtualization techniques in supporting stateful application migrations across networks and environments. AI lab. Ambient Networking Ambient networking is an IST funded project targeting the integration of multiple radio access technologies, code division technologies and Bluetooth. Ambient networking users can seamlessly choose the network to connect to, while operators are assisted through network management and configuration utilities. References IEEE 802.21 IEEE specifies a set of communication protocols across the 802 family (wireless LAN- WIFI- CDMA ..). How to allow the laptop or mobile phone to select which network to use? Can we guarantee moving (Handover) between two different networks while sustaining the same level of quality of service? IEEE802.21 looks into the integration within the 802 family of protocols and together with other technologies. • Ambient Networks. IST project portal: http://www.ambient-networks.org/ • Pebbles in Oxygen and Autohan: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/srg/HAN/pebbles/ • IEEE 802.21: http://www.ieee802.org/21/ • MetaCase: Domain Specific Modelling with MetaEdit+: http://www.metacase.com/