Connecting non-Java devices to a Jini network

Recently, several schemes have been proposed to interconnect extremely small devices in a plug and play manner. One of these is Sun Microsystems´ Jini^TM-which defines a federation of entities which can communicate with each other. Once a device joins a Jini federation, client programs anywhere on the network can look it up in a central directory and use it by dynamically downloading a proxy which represents the device. Jini uses the Remote Method Invocation (RMI) mechanism provided by Java at its heart and any entity which wants to participate in a Jini federation requires an RMI-enabled Java Virtual Machine. Because embedded devices generally lack the resources to support an RMI-enabled JVM, some other method has to be found to hook them up to a Jini federation. We explore the issues involved in connecting non-Java devices to Jini federations by using a Java-based surrogate running on a more powerful machine in the same local network