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A Mobile Access Gateway for Managing Intermittent Connectivity

Bibliographic Entry Jörg Ott, Dirk Kutscher; A Mobile Access Gateway for Managing Intermittent Connectivity; Proceedings of 14th IST Mobile & Wireless Communication Summit, Dresden; June 2005
Abstract The Drive-thru Internet architecture allows exploiting intermittent connectivity by temporarily connecting to IEEE 802.11 WLAN access points at the roadside from moving vehicles. This poses numerous challenges to a mobile user's equipment: extreme networking characteristics such as short periods of connectivity, unpredictable disconnection times, and vastly varying transmission characteristics. Heterogeneous WLAN hot-spot installations may also require different authentication mechanisms and credentials. We have designed a mobile access gateway to deal with these issues on behalf of a user (group) in a moving vehicle and provide usable connectivity for applications without requiring manual operation. The gateway maximizes the use of short connectivity periods by detecting network access providing signaling functions for local application processes. It also allows using dedicated radio equipment to prolong connectivity periods. Finally, in selected multi-user scenarios, further performance improvements are conceivable by sharing (non-confidential) information across users and applications.
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