Always on: a new paradigm for wireless networks

With the popularity of services like push-to-talk, the need for "always on" services is becoming important for service providers. The paper addresses the problem of supporting always on services in existing and new network architectures. It defines the requirements of always on service, identifies the problems in supporting such a service, and proposes an overlay network based solution to make always on service a reality. Some results from initial prototyping and experimentation are also presented to demonstrate the feasibility of deploying such services.