The design and deployment of a mobility supporting network

GEMS (Generic Environment for Mobility Support) is a new project at the State University of New York, Binghamton for exploring essential mechanisms to support mobile users. In many cases, mobile users require access to the same (or similar) resources irrespective of their location, e.g. the same file system. Yet, there exist other situations in which the most relevant resource (or information) is necessarily location dependent, e.g. nearest printer or weather information. The GEMS project aims to provide an environment with appropriate support for both kinds of situations. It also addresses the case when a mobile user may not have traditional network connectivity (e.g. TCP/IP) but may be reachable through other means, such as a paging device. This paper presents our design of a comprehensive mobility supporting network, current status of the project, a description of ongoing work and future directions