Seamless service platform for following a user's movement in a dynamic network environment

Abstract

This paper proposes a seamless service platform for continuous service provision in dynamic network environments. In the future, many kinds of terminals will collectively form a pervasive computing environment that is available anywhere. The elements of a network of this type can dynamically change, merge, or separate, and users can migrate within and between networks. Such changes of environment generate several new requirements. We propose a network that acts and an overlay on the transport layer, thus concealing changes of many kinds. This overlay network realizes what we call a seamless-service platform This platform can easily accommodate existing applications and application protocols, because common functions are reused. Moreover, the platform is based on middleware over the transport layer (e.g., TCP/IP). The method's OS-independence makes it easy to simultaneously support terminal of various kinds. Experiments with a prototype implementation of our seamless-service platform demonstrated its effectiveness and feasibility.