Session mobility in the mockets communication middleware

Abstract

Taking advantage of the benefits of modern networking, a growing number of users are exhibiting mobile behavior. As they roam between different network localities, they access the Internet and the Web exploiting both wired and wireless communications and using several heterogeneous devices. Mobile users want to access their subscribed services anywhere, anytime, and want to preserve their currently opened service sessions as they roam between different network localities or switch between different devices. Mobile users' requirements call for novel middlewares to provide support for mobility on top of the traditional Internet infrastructure. In this context, we have developed Mockets, a communication middleware specifically designed to address the challenges ofwireless networks and mobile computing.In particular, Mockets supports session mobility in terms ofseamless handover for preservation ofend-toend connectivity in spite of node mobility, automatic detection and exploitation of best available connectivity, and migration of service session endpoints from one node to another.

Seamless network migration using the Mockets communications middleware

“…Mockets was designed to support mobile service sessions. Two aspects of mobility are implemented: session migration to different nodes and network migration by dynamically changing the network attachment point [9]. Endpoint migration to a different node lets the application suspend the Mockets connection, retrieve the state of the endpoint, and send it to a different node that will use it to resume the connection and continue the communication with the peer.…”