A Group Communication Approach for Mobile Computing Mobile Channel: An ISIS Tool for Mobile Services

Abstract

This paper examines group communication as an infrastructure to support mobility of users, and presents a simple scheme to support user mobility by means of switching a control point between replicated servers. We describe the design and implementation of a set of tools, called Mobile Channel, for use with the ISIS system. Mobile Channel is based on a combination of the two replication schemes: the primary-backup approach and the state machine approach. Mobile Channel implements a reliable one-to-many FIFO channel, in which a mobile client sees a single reliable server; servers, acting as a state machine, see multicast messages from clients. Migrations of mobile clients are handled as an intentional primary switch, and hand-offs or server failures are completely masked to mobile clients. To achieve high performance, servers are replicated at a sliding-window level. Our scheme provides a simple abstraction of migration, eliminates complicated hand-off protocols, provides fault-tolerance and is implemented within the existing group communication mechanism.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
May 01, 1994
Accession Number
ADA279785

Entities

People

  • Ken Birman
  • Kenjiro Cho

Organizations

  • Cornell University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Communication Channels
  • Communication Systems
  • Complex Systems
  • Computer Programming
  • Computer Programs
  • Computer Science
  • Computers
  • Electronic Mail
  • Fault Tolerance
  • Mobile Computing
  • Mobile Devices
  • Network Architecture
  • Network Protocols
  • Network Topology
  • Operating Systems
  • Wireless Communications
  • Wireless Networks

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Computer Networking