Introduction
Managing Mobile Code
August 23, 1999
By Peter Rysavy
Computers are becoming smaller, and as a consequence, increasingly mobile. Just witness the evolution from room-sized behemoths to palm-sized pets that easily fit in our pocket. Although laptop and handheld computers have proved very useful to millions of users, they have not even begun to reach their true potential. Largely missing until now have been easy connections to private intranets and the Internet at large. By connections we mean more than just a modem or wireless connection. We mean sharing and accessing important information, which in addition to network connectivity, involves content, security and client/server mechanisms. Our desires are to have our appointments automatically kept up to date on our PDA as we travel; to use our smart phones to change our flight plans; to reliably and efficiently access our e-mail from anywhere; to receive news tailored to our own interests; to access key data in our corporate databases; to receive real-time traffic information; and, most importantly, to have greater freedom in our lives.
Figure 1: Always connected.
Much of the technology for this kind of connectivity exists today. But it is spread among many sources, including wireless service providers, content developers, handheld computer vendors, OS vendors and application developers. Now a whole new category of company is emerging--the third-party service provider that operates gateways to connect mobile clients to fixed-end networks using mechanisms that span from Layer 1 to Layer 7 of the ISO networking model. Our task in this chapter is to lay out the issues involved in providing complete mobile connectivity, to introduce the types of networks you should be considering as well as the tools and services available and to show the different approaches used for different types of applications. We also highlight various services becoming available to help pull it all together.
Our table of contents:
Platforms - the hardware and software platforms available for mobile connectivity and how to choose between them.
Network Options - a review of wireless/wireline network options, including some of the new data developments for PCS networks.
Architecture - a discussion of the most effective communications architecture for mobile computing devices.
Applications - the issues and remedies in making mainstream applications available to mobile clients, including Exchange, Notes, databases, Web servers and more.
Services - a list of services such as those from Wireless Knowledge (a joint venture between Microsoft and Qualcomm) to make enterprise information readily available to mobile devices.
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