Enabling Cross-Technology Mobile Applications with Network-Aware References
Publication Type:
Book ChapterSource:
Coordination Models and Languages, Springer Berlin Heidelberg, Volume 6721, p.142-156 (2011)ISBN:
978-3-642-21463-9URL:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-21464-6_10Keywords:
Bluetooth, distributed programming, mobile applications, multi-networking, Network-awareness, Wi-FiAbstract:
Mobile devices, such as smart phones, have become ubiquitous. This evolution has given rise to a vast ecosystem of mobile applications. Typically these applications only use a small subset of the networking technologies at their disposal. Building applications that use multiple networking technologies simultaneously or exploit knowledge about the available connections is a laborious task. Programmers must manually keep track of the connectivity state and duplicate communication code per connection type. This paper presents network-aware references, a distributed object-oriented programming abstraction that eases multi-networking for mobile applications and allows programmers to react to changes in the connectivity of different networks around them. We show how network-aware references are implemented and evaluate how well they switch between technologies.