High performance wireless computing

Abstract

This session deals with fundamental issues arising in wireless networking and their implications for high performance business, consumer and military computing applications. We will describe the physical basis for wireless networking, mobile IP solutions and challenges as well as ongoing research efforts to make high performance and high confidence computing over wireless networks possible.

One of the major technical challenges for wireless computing is the volatility of the network links and nodes. Bandwidth and latency vary much more rapidly than in wired networks and network connectivity is highly intermittent because of transmission anomolies and power conservation, among other factors. Moreover, the network topology is constantly changing because the nodes are mobile.

These challenges can be met using a variety of novel network management ideas and applications software. We are developing support for scalable mobile IP, dynamic network sensing and predictive routing, proxy servers and docking systems. Many of these developments use mobile agents as a building block. The mobile agent system we are using is based on Agent Tcl which was developed at Dartmouth (see http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/ agent).

Part of the research presented is funded by the US Department of Defense through a Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative at Dartmouth with subcontracts to Harvard, University of Illinois, RPI, Lockheed Martin and Al-phatech. Industrial partners include Merrill Lynch, Northern Telecom, Digital Equipment, Lucent and AT&T.