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UNIT-III: Mobile Networking: Virtual IP Protocols - Loose Source Routing Protocols - Mobile IP – CDPD– GPRS –
UMTS - Security and Authentication – Quality of Service – Mobile Access to the WorldWide Web.

MOBILE NETWORKING

Internetworking mobile computers with the fixed-network raises the additional requirements of
mobility transparency and mobility and location management. The mobility behavior of a node should be
transparent to a peer node. A peer node should be able to communicate with a mobile node using some
fixed IP address irrespective of the current point of attachment.
The mobile networking protocol should also be transparent to the hosts and router which do not
understand or support mobility. Thus the mobility unaware routers should be able to route packets
destined to a mobile host as a normal IP data packets
Security is another important concern in networking. In mobile networking it is more so, since the
mobile nodes will be visiting foreign networks, and accessing data. Thus, it is important that the security
of the visiting network is not breached due to the presence of foreign node in its network.
Authentication of the mobile nodes and foreign networks is also important. Thus, at a minimum,
mobile networking protocols should provide authentication and security features comparable to those
found in fixed-network IP protocol such as IPv4 and IPv6.

Various approaches and protocols for mobile internetworking

 Early approaches: virtual IP mechanism
 Loose Source Routing Protocol
 Then Mobile Internet Protocol (MOBILE-IP)
 Cellular Digital Packet Data (CDPD)
 The General Packet Radio Service Protocol (GPRS)

EARLY APPROACHES: VIRTUAL IP MECHANISM

1. Define AMT.
2. Explain Sunshine &Postel
3. Describe the SONY protocol.
4. Explain Virtual IP mechanism.

A mobile is a virtual network with a virtual address space. A mapping is maintained between the
physical or an actual IP addresses and the virtual IP addresses. This mapping is performed by the mobile
host which obtains a care of address from the local network being visited using either the Dynamic Host
Configuration Protocol (DHCP) or the BOOTP protocols or by any of the link layer protocols. Below, we
describe two Virtual IP protocols.
 Sunshine And Postel
 The SONY Protocol
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 Sunshine And Postel

The earliest solution for managing mobile hosts was proposed by Sunshine and Postel in 1980.
They proposed that the mobile hosts be assigned a virtual IP address which can be used to identify them.
A mobile host in the foreign network is required to obtain a care-of-address, and to update its location in a
mapping database. When a packet has to be routed to the mobile host, its current location is looked up in
the database and the packet is transmitted to that location.
 The SONY Protocol
This protocol was proposed in 1992 by F. Teraoka et al. of Sony Laboratories. In this scheme, a
mobile host has two IP addresses associated with it. A virtual address, which is immutable and by which it
is known to the outside world, and a physical address, which is acquired from the local network. Two sub
layers are introduced in the network layer and are used to map the physical address to the virtual address.
The transport layer interfaces with the network layer through the virtual layer interface and
addresses its packets to the virtual address of a mobile host. A cache called the Address Mapping Table
(AMT) is used for fast address resolution. A copy of this cache is maintained at each host/router. The
VIP (Virtual IP) is implemented as an IP option.
A set ofpacket types is also defined for host communication.On entering a foreign network, the
mobile host obtains an IP address andinforms its home network of its current location. The home network
broadcaststhis information so the AMT cache gets updated.
A stationary host, whenrequired to communicate with a mobile host, looks up its cache. If the
mappingis available, the packet is transmitted in the normal fashion by appending theVIP header. If the
cache entry is not available, the packet is addressed to theVIP address. A set of connection gateways are
required for the co-existence ofmobility aware and mobility unaware hosts on the network.

LOOSE SOURCE ROUTING PROTOCOL

1. Explain loose source routing protocol.

This approach was proposed by DAVID JOHNSON of CMU in 1993. It uses the Loose Source option
available in IPv4 for routing packet data. The option allows the source to specify the intermediate
gateways in the IP packet.
Thus, the source can control the route the IP packet takes. At each destination, the gateway picks
up the next IP address from the IP packet, sets it as the destination, and advances a pointer stored in the IP
packet header.
The home network maintains a database of all mobile host native to its network. When a mobile
host changes location, it informs its home network of its location, it informs its home network of its new
location.
When an IP packet destined to the mobile host arrives at the home network, the packet is
forwarded to the mobile host at the current location address, and the corresponding source host is
informed of the current location of the mobile host.
The corresponding host can use this information to cache the location, thus avoiding
communication with the home network until the mobile host changes its location again. Source route set
up is done by the corresponding host.
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THE MOBILE INTERNET PROTOCOL (Mobile–IP)

1. What is MN (Mobile Node)?*

2. Define HA (Home Agent).*
3. Define FA (Foreign Agent).*
4. Write the different types of traditional routing algorithms.*
5. Define distance vector algorithm.
6. Define Link state routing algorithm.
7. Explain triangular routing approach.*
8. Define Mosquito Net.
9. What is IP-in-IP tunneling
10. What is dynamic source routing?
11. Explain in detail about Mobile-IP. (11m) *
12. Describe Ad-Hoc mobility. (6m)

The Mobile Internet Protocol defines enhancements to the IP to allow routing of IP packets to
mobile nodes in the internet. The IP version 4 assumes that the IP of a node uniquely identifies the point
of attachment of the node to the internetwork.

Packets are routed based on the IP address. In a mobile environment the point of attachment of the
mobile node will be different from time to time, and the mobile nodes could be attached to different
networks.

For IPv4 to work correctly in the mobile environment, the mobile node will either have to be
assigned a new IP address every time it changes its point of attachment, or the host specific routing
information has to be supplied throughout the network.

Both of these alternatives result in scalability and connection management problems. The mobile
IP protocol describes a mechanism which allows nodes to change their point of attachment on the internet.

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7. The datagrams originating from the mobile node are routed in the normalfashion. The foreign agent
may act as a default router in this case.

The routing path of a datagram sent from a fixed host to a mobile node is asfollows:
 The datagram is sent from the fixed host to the home agent using standard IP routing
 The home agent encapsulates the received datagram inside another datagram and sends it to the
foreign agent (IP-in-IP tunneling)
 The encapsulated IP packet is received by the foreign agent, decapsulated,and forwarded to the
mobile node
 The mobile node replies by sendinga datagram to the fixed host through the foreign agent.
The Mobile IP protocolstack on the fixed network and on the mobile unit is depicted in Figure 7.1.

The Mobile Host Protocol, known as Mobile-IP, is an evolving standard being developed by the
IETF Working Group on IP Routing for Wireless/Mobile Hosts. Standards for both IPv4 and IPv6 have
been proposed and are being reviewed for enhancements in scalability and performance.
In particular, the triangular routing between the mobile node, the home agent, and the foreign
agent (that must be performed every time the mobile node switches over to another communication cell) is
a bottleneck that is being removed in IPv6 [81].
Packets addressed to the mobile node’s home address are transparently routed to its care-of
address. The optimized protocol enables IPv6 nodes to cache the binding of a mobile node’s home address
with its care-of address, and tothen send any packets destined for the mobile node directly to it at this
care-ofaddress.
The MosquitoNet project at Stanford [24] aimed at relaxing the requirement of foreign agent
availability. MosquitoNet follows the IETF specification of Mobile-IP to support host mobility, but does
not require FA support in foreign networks visited by the mobile node.

Support for Ad-Hoc Mobility

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An ad-hoc mobile network is a collection of wireless mobile nodes forming atemporary network
without the aid of any established infrastructure or centralizedadministration.
Examples of ad-hoc networks include wireless portable devices of a group of collaborator, such as
an emergency team in a disasterarea. No routing is needed between ad-hoc nodes which are within
transmission range of each other’s. Otherwise, additional nodes must be used to form asequence of hops
from the source to the destination.
Routing algorithms in thead-hoc environment are therefore a necessary support for this mode of
mobile connection. Traditional routing algorithms used in wire line networks use distance vector
orlink state routing algorithms, which rely on periodically broadcasting routingadvertisements by each
router node.

 The distance vector algorithm broadcastsits view of the distance from a router no each
host.
 The link staterouting algorithm broadcasts its view of the adjacent network links.
Neitheralgorithm is suitable for the ad-hoc environment because periodic broadcastswill drain battery
power quickly.

Research in ad-hoc routing is dedicated to finding algorithms that avoid theneedless battery
consumption and the inefficient use of the wireless bandwidth.Dynamic source routing is one such
algorithm due to Johnson and Maltz. It allows for route discovery, route maintenance, and the use of
route caches. To discover an available route, a source node sends out a route request packet indicating
the source, the target nodes, and a request identifier.
When a mobile node receives a route request packet, it checks a list of recently processed
requests. If a request is found for the same source and request id, the request is dropped and no further
action is taken. Otherwise, the address of the node servicing the request is added to the route request
packet before the packet is re-broadcasted. However, if the address of the node servicing the request is
identical to the target node address, the requested route is discovered, and a reply is sent to the source
node.
Due to unpredictable node mobility, cached routes may become incorrect.Route maintenance is
therefore necessary in this environment. This is achievedby requiring nodes routing packets to
acknowledge successful forwarding andto send error messages to the source node if a route ceases to exist.
Activemonitoring such as MAC-level acknowledgements, as well as passive monitoring(listening to
nearby broadcast, in a promiscuous mode), can be used inroute maintenance.
Other recent ad-hoc routing protocols that can be found in the literature includethe on-demand
distance vector routing, the Location-Aided Routing (LAR)algorithm, and the Distance Routing Effect
Algorithm.

CELLULAR DIGITAL PACKET DATA (CDPD)

1. Define CDPD.
2. What is WDF?
3. What are MHF & SF?*
4. Define M-ES & MD-IS.*
5. Define MNRP & MNLP and writes its function.
6. Define MDBS.
7. Write the difference between CDPD & Mobile-IP.
8. Describe CDPD (6M) *
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CDPD is a connectionless multi-network protocol, proposed originally by theCDPD Forum (now

called the WDF Forum). It is based on the early versionsof Mobile-IP . The idea behind CDPD is to share
unused channels in existingAdvanced Mobile Phone Systems (AMPS) to provide up to 19.2 kbps
datachannel.
Even though CDPD and Mobile-IP are similar, their terminologies are different.CDPD follows the
OSI model terminology. For example, the mobile node is called a Mobile End-System (M-ES); the
home and foreign agents are called Mobile Home and Mobile Serving Functions (MHF and SF
respectively) and reside in a mobile data intermediate system (MD-IS).
A Mobile Database Station (MDBS) is also defined which deals with the air link
communications and acts as a data link layer relay between the M-ES and the serving MD-IS. Two
protocols, the Mobile Node Registration Protocol (MNRP) and the Mobile Node Location Protocol
(MNLP), are responsible for registration of the M-ES with its home MD-IS and the proper routing of
packets destined for the M-ES.
The main resemblance between CDPD and Mobile-IP is in the triangular routingapproach between
the mobile node and the home and foreign agents.
The main differences can be summarized as follows,

1. The user’s IP address must be assigned by the CDPD SERVICE provider. Mobile IP makes no
such assumptions.
2. Mobile IP allows the mobile node to also be a foreign agent. Combining the M-ES and the
serving MD-IS was not considered and is not practical in CDPD.
3. CDPD’S mobility tunneling is based on CLNP. Mobile IP’s mobility tunneling is based on the
IP-in-IP protocol, which is IP based.
4. Mobile IP operates completely above the data link layer. CDPD mobility, on the other hand, is
mostly above the data link layer.
5. Since the infrastructure of the CDPD network is closed there are less security consideration for
CDPD.

While the standardization process of Mobile IP has been progressing rather slowly, CDPD has been
deployed for a few years now, and is receiving the support of major AMPS carriers. However, due to its
lack of openness, the further of CDPD deployment and/or acceptance can only be guessed.

THE GSM GENERAL PACKET RADIO SERVICE (GPRS)

1. Define GSN. *
2. Define GPRS.*
3. Explain GGSN
4. Explain SGSN
5. Explain in detail about GPRS. (6M)

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GPRS is a GSM packet data service developed by the (ETSI) European Telecommunication
Standards Institute as part of GSM phase 2+ developments. The goal of GPRS was to support data transfer
rates higher than the 9.6 kbps achieved through GSM’S circuit switching technology.
Unlike Mobile-IP, GPRS is not restricted to IP packet data protocols, and offer connection to
standard protocols (such as TCP/IP, X.25, and CLNP) AS well specialized data packet protocols. Mobile-
IP, however, influenced the design of mobility management in GPRS.
Figure 7.2 shows the architecture of a GSM system that uses GPRS. In addition to the BASE
Transceiver Station (BTS), Base Station Controller (BSC), and the Mobile Switching Center (MSC), a
new logical network node called the GPRS support node (GSN) was introduced in order to create an end-
to-end packet transfer mode.

P
hysically, the GSN can be integrated with the mobile switching center (MSC), or it can be a separate
network element based on the architecture of data networks routers. GSN is a mobility management with
the GPRS registers, and delivery of data packets to MSs, independently oftheir locations.
One GSN is designated the Gateway GSN (GGSN) and acts as a logical interfaceto external packet
data networks. The GGSN is similar to the home agentin Mobile-IP. It updates the location directory of
the mobile station (MS) usingrouting information supplied by the Serving GSN node (SGSN).
The latter issimilar to the foreign agent in Mobile-IP. GGSN also routes the external datanetwork
protocol packet encapsulated over the GPRS backbone to the SGSNcurrently serving the MS. It also
decapsulates and forwards external data networkpackets to the appropriate data network and handles the
billing of datatraffic.
The SGSN is responsible for the delivery of packets to the mobile stationswithin its service area.
The main functions of the SGSN are to detect newGPRS MSs in its service area, handle the process of

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registering the new MSsalong with the GPRS registers, send/receive data packets to/from the GPRSMS,
and keep a record of the location of MSs Inside of its service area.
TheGPRS register acts as a database from which the SGSNs can ask whether anew MS in its area
is allowed to join the GPRS network. For the coordinationof circuit and packet switched services, an
association between the GSM MSCand the GSN is created. This association is used to keep routing and
locationarea information up-to-date in both entities.
UMTS: 1. Describe UMTS (6M)

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SECURITY AND AUTHENTICATION ISSUES IN MOBILE NETWORKS

1. Define Deffie-Hellamn key.

2. Describe security and authentication issues in mobile networks.

In a mobile computing environment, it is desirable to protect information aboutthe movements and

activities of mobile users from onlookers. In addition tothe basic security concerns in wire line systems
(authentication, confidentiality,and key distribution), a new issue is the privacy and anonymity of the
user’smovement and identity.
In fact, a typical situation arises when a mobile userregisters in one domain (home domain) and
appears in a different foreign domain;the user must be authenticated and his solvency must be confirmed.
Usually during this process the user has to provide a non-ambiguous identityto his home domain
and has to verify it. If no care is taken, this identity can betapped on the air interface in a cellular
environment or through the signalingprotocols exchanged on the registered wired network.
In CDPD, all the mobility management, as well as security-related activity, areconcentrated in the
Massage-Data Intermediate System (MD-IS). Each MD-IS controls an area covered by a number of base
stations. Upon arrival to a new area, the mobile unit engages in a DIFFIE-HELLAMN key exchanges
protocol with the local MD-IS. As a result, both parties obtain a shared secret key.
Subsequently, the mobile unit encrypts its real identity and transmits it to local MD-IS. This
approach allows the local MD-IS to discover the real identity of the mobile unit. Unfortunately, the key
exchanging protocol itself is not secure. This means that an active attacker masquerading as the local
domain authority can engage in the key exchange protocol with the mobile unit and obtain a shared key.

QUALITY OF SERVICE IN MOBILE NETWORKS

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1. Name the three research efforts that address QoS

2. Explain Optimizing TCP/IP for mobile networks
3. What is MHP?*
4. Explain QoS Driven, High-Level Communication Protocols.
5. Describe QEX. *
6. Explain QoS Driven, Full Protocol Stacks.
7. Explain in detail about quality of service in mobile networks. (11m) *

Mobile network protocols such as Mobile-IP and GPRS provide mobility transparency at the
network layer level. This allows the higher layers of the protocol stack to be used unchanged.
Unfortunately, there are ill consequences to this transparency that are mostly attributed to the constraints
of the wireless and mobile environment.
Existing session protocols are not of much use under frequent disconnections and reconnections of
the same mobile computation.
Similarly, existing presentation layer protocols are inappropriate to use unchanged, in the wireless and
mobile environment.
Eg: A user with a limited display and limited battery PDA will not be able to browse the Web unless the
presentation of the downloaded data is changed to suite her PDA’s capabilities.
Regardless of which particular upper layer in the protocol stack suffers the consequence of
transparency, the effect on the end-user will always be felt as unacceptable fluctuation in the perceived
QoS.

Three research efforts that address QoS concerns in the wireless and mobile environment.

OPTIMIZING TCP/IP FOR MOBILE NETWORKS

Since mobile user will need connection-oriented communication to obtain remote services, they will have
to use transport protocols developed for the fixed network. Unfortunately, such protocols likeTCP perform
poorly when used unmodified in the mobile network. Eg, TCP acknowledgement timeout is in the range
of tens of milliseconds.
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A mobile unit crossing cell boundaries blanks out during a hand-off procedure that could last up to
1,000 milliseconds. This leads to sender timeouts and repeated re-transmission. Another source of re-
transmission is the high error rate inherent in the wireless transmission characteristics.
Another problem that can lead to performance degradation under standard TCP is bandwidth
allocation under unpredictable mobility. An unpredicted number of mobile user can move into the same
cell, thus competing on sharing the limited wireless link.
Under this scenario, it is difficult to build an application that provides performance guarantees or
quality of service. A few approaches have been proposed to optimize and extend thestandard TCP
protocol so that it can be used efficiently under a mobile networkprotocol such as Mobile IP.

1. Yavatkar et al
Yavatkar et al] proposed an approach whereby the communication path betweenthe mobile end
and the fixed end is split into two separate connections:one over the wireless link and another over the
wired links. The connection overthe wireless link may either use regular TCP or a specialized transport
protocoloptimized for better performance.
The splitting of a connection is transparent to an application and no changes are necessary to
protocol software on the stationary hosts. A new session layer protocol called Mobile Host Protocol
(MHP) is introduced atop standard TCP. MHP compensates for wireless link characteristics and for
host migration. It is located at both the base station and the mobile host.
An advantage of this approach is that performance degradation inTCP is limited to a “short”
connection over the wireless hop, while traffic overthe “long” connection over the wired network can be
protected from the impactof erratic behavior over the wireless link.
A second alternative is proposed inthe same work which is similar to the MHP alternative except
that MHP usesa specialized protocol instead of TCP over the wireless hop. The specializedprotocol
differs from standard TCP in that the former uses selective acknowledgementby the receiver, in which a
bitmask is used to indicate all missingsegments of the connection stream. This way, the recovery of all
losses canbe performed via a single round trip message, resulting in a better throughputperformance.

Another approach similar to Yavatkar’s is the I-TCP protocol (Indirect Transport

Layer Protocol), which also splits the communication path between the mobile host and the fixed
network host into two connections; the first between the mobile host and the base station, over the
wireless link, using the I-TCP protocol; and the second between the base station and the fixed network
host using standard TCP.

2. Balakrishnan et al
Balakrishnan et al took a slightly different approach to improve the performanceof TCP in the
mobile network. They focused on the re-transmissionbehavior of TCP due to hand-off. They redesigned
the network layer so that itcaches packets at the base stations. Retransmission can therefore be
performedlocally between the base station and the mobile unit.
The gain is that the erratictransmission characteristics of the wireless link are dealt with in
isolationof the rest of the fixed network. Experimental evaluation showed a throughputincrease of up to 20
times over standard TCP. Their results are based on theLucent/NCR Wavelan network.

3. Caceres et al
Similar research by Caceres and Iftode addressed the problem of communicationpauses due to
hand-off. They observed that such pauses are interpretedby standard TCP (Tahoe in their experiment) as

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packet losses due to congestion,which consequently causes retransmissions that get further timed out
duringthe hand-off.
They proposed using the fast re-transmission option availablein TCP-Tahoe immediately after
hand-off is completed. Their experimentalverification shows clear smoothening of TCP performance
during hand-off.

QOS DRIVEN, HIGH-LEVEL COMMUNICATION PROTOCOLS

Optimizing the behavior and performance of transport protocols is not sufficientto maintain the
QoS required by applications. For example, most Webbrowsers use multiple TCP connections to access a
multimedia page. While thisparallelism achieves speedup in the fixed network, it is slow and
inappropriatein the wireless and mobile environment.
In addition to transport optimizations,what was found needed are application-aware (or
application-specific)mechanisms to monitor, request, and maintain QoS from the application oruser point
of view. This section describes a high-level, above-transport protocol that understands application QoS
requirements and resource limitations.
1. The Loss Profile Approach
Seal and Singh [87] considered the problem of unpredictable mobility and itseffect on the
degradation of the wireless communication performance. Theyaddressed the case where the aggregate
bandwidth required by all mobile unitsin an overloaded cell exceeds the cell’s available bandwidth.
Their mechanismis simple and relies on policies and measures for discarding parts of the data ofthe
mobile users. Instead of discarding data in an arbitrary manner, guidelinesare proposed to avoid discarding
critical portions of the data.
A Loss Profile isproposed and is defined to be a description, provided by the application, of
an“acceptable” manner in which data for its connection may be discarded. Theloss profile is used in the
event of bandwidth reduction at the wireless end of theconnection.
An elaborate example of a loss profile is given on viewer perceptionof a video clip under data
loss. The loss profile is used by a specialized sessionlayer which is transparent to the application.
2. QEX: The QoS Driven Remote Execution Protocol
In the problem of fluctuations in the quality of service (QoS) in a federationof heterogeneous
networks is addressed. The work describes a designof a distributed system platform that supports the
development of adaptableservices.
The design allows services to tolerate the heterogeneity of the environmentby dynamically
adapting to changes in the available communicationQoS. The implementation of the distributed system is
based on APM Ltd.’sANSAware software suite, which is based on the ANSA architecture that hashad
some influence on the ISO Reference Model for Open Distributed Processing(RM-ODP).
The purpose of this effort is to propose extensions to emergingdistributed systems standards in
order to support mobile services. The basicANSAware platform is extended to support operation in the
mobile environmentby introducing the notion of explicit bindings, which is a QoS-aware RPCprotocol for
objects called QEX.
Explicit bindings allow application programmers to specify QoS constraintson bindings between
objects, and to detect violations of these constraints atrun time. To support explicit bindings, a new remote
procedure call protocolhas been developed for ANSAware.
The new RPC is able to maintain QoSinformation on the underlying communications
infrastructure and to adapt tochanges in the perceived QoS. Moreover, it is able, via explicit bindings,
topass on relevant QoS information to interested applications. This allows theapplications themselves to
adapt to changes in the QoS.

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Binding parametersinclude specification of parameters such as the desired throughput, latency,and

jitter associated with the binding. Clients are returned a binding controlinterface as a result of an explicit
bind operation. To control the QoS of theflow once the binding has been established, the control interface
includes apair of operations setQoS() and getQoS().
These operations take as argumentsa set of QoS parameters which can then be passed by the
stream binding tothe underlying transport protocol. A call-back mechanism is also provided toinform
client objects of QoS degradations reported by the underlying transportservice.
The work is being put to test using an adaptive collaborative mobile applicationdesigned to support
field engineers in the U.K. power distribution industry.

QOS DRIVEN, FULL PROTOCOL STACKS

Future mobile services will be built upon federations of heterogeneous networksmaintained and
administered by different providers. The mobility of users willforce an application to migrate along
overlays of networks that vary in theirbandwidth, latency, range, and transmission characteristics.
Unless the applicationadapts to variations in the network overlay, the application performanceis
bound to suffer. A network overlay can include a cellular network, a personalcommunication system
(PCS), a wireless LAN, an Internet connection, and/ora satellite communication loop, among other
networks. In addition to the heterogeneityof networks, the heterogeneity of the mobile platforms imposes
agreat impediment to mobile application portability.
Unless applications adaptto the capabilities and limitations of the mobile computer with respect to
thetype and media of communicated data, applications will remain proprietary tothe specific mobile
computer platforms they were originally designed for.
Thissection describes a research project that proposes a full stack solution as anoverlay network
stack atop a heterogeneous collection of wireless subnets. Thissection also describes an ongoing
standardization effort called WAP that aimsat proposing a specification of a full ISO/OSI-like network
stack that is wirelessand mobile aware.

1. BARWAN: The Wireless Overlay Network Architecture

The BARWAN project at the University of California at Berkeley developedan architecture that
supports applications’ graceful adaptation to theavailable bandwidth and latency of the wireless network.
The architectureassumes an overlay of various wireless networks ranging from regional-area,wide-area,
metropolitan-area, campus-area, in-building, and in-room wirelessnetworks.
A testbed of wireless overlay network management that supportsmedia-intensive applications has
been used to demonstrate the adaptability featuresof BARWAN. The testbed that has been developed in
the San FranciscoBay Area includes the participation of over six local carriers including Nexteland
Metricom.
The testbed integrates the participants’ networks and allowsfull coverage of the greater Bay Area.
The BARWAN architecture is gateway centric,meaning it provides gateway connections from the mobile
host to eachparticipating wireless networks. Medical imaging applications have been developedto drive
the testbed.
The layered architecture of BARWAN is shown in Figure 7.3. It shows all layersdesigned for
wireless overlay network integration and for providing applicationsupport. The lowest layer is the wireless
overlay subnets, which are the carrier networks including data link interface, and possibly carrier network
routing.
The detail of this layer depends on the specific subnets being integrated.Next is a layer called the
Overlay Network Management Layer which includesnetwork and transport functionalities including

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location tracking, QoS-basedhand-off management, other QoS services, and connection-oriented

transportmechanisms.
The next higher up layer is the Session Management Layer whichprovides a “transactional”
transport (called message-oriented interface). Thelayer attempts to optimize transport connections related
to the same applicationby session sharing whenever possible. On top of the session layer isthe Application
Support Services including support for various data types andcontinuous media such as audio and video.
Finally, the mobile multimedia applicationis on top of the stack. Figure 7.3 also shows how the
quality of servicesneeds pass down the layers from applications towards the network managementlayers,
while information about network capabilities propagates up the layers.

2. The Wireless Application Protocol (WAP)

In June 1997, Ericsson, Nokia, Motorola, and Phone.Com (previously UnwiredPlanet) formed a
consortium for the standardization of open middlewarearchitecture for wireless application. The objective
was to create the specificationof a wireless application environment and a wireless ISO/OSI-like
protocolstack.
The goal was to provide the needed interoperability to connect differentportable devices, via
heterogeneous wireless networks, into the internetand corporate intranets. The focus was to bring the
internet content and advancedservices to digital cellular phones and other hand-held devices such assmart
communicators and PDAs.
In January 1998, the consortium created anonprofit company named the WAP Forum with the
mission of enabling: (1)interoperability across heterogeneous portable devices, wireless networks,
andinternet contents, and (2) portability of third party wireless software and applicationsacross different
portable devices that are WAP-compliant. Currently,the WAP Forum is creating a set of specifications for
the Wireless ApplicationEnvironment and for each layer in the WAP protocol stack.
The architectural infrastructure of WAP is depicted in Figure 7.4 and consistsof:
(1) hand-held devices ranging from digital cellular phones, to smart communicatorssuch as the
Nokia 9000, to palmtop computers. Only devices thatwill be WAP-compliant (implement the WAP
stack and wireless applicationenvironment) are part of the WAP infrastructure,
(2) WAP-compliant wirelessnetworks, which are carrier networks augmented with the WAP
stack on top ofthe air link interfaces,
(3) WAP-compliant internet information providers suchas Web servers, that must conform
to levels of presentations of information suitable to the capabilities of the hand- held device requesting
the information, and
(4) WAP- compliant TeleVAS providers.

In the heart of the WAP standard is the WAP protocol stack shown in fig: 7.5. The stack is similar to the
ISO/OSI stack and consists of a lowest layer containing air link interfaces such as GSM’S GPRS, CDPD,
D-AMPS, among others. This lowest layer corresponds to both the physical and the data link layer
combined in the OSI stack.
On top of the air link is the transport layer, in which datagram and connection-oriented streams are
supported. Also, transactional connections are supported to enable electronic commerce applications. This
layer corresponds to both the network and the transport layers of the OSI stack combined.
On top of the transport, WAP dedicates a layer for security. This includes encryption, authentication, and
capabilities. On top of security is the session layer which is responsible for enabling multi-tasking on the
hand-held device. This is because multiple connections can be maintained as multiple sessions managed

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by the session’s layer. The session layer, which is the most elaborate layer, also contains QoS features
including:
•Exception mechanism to allow applications to register interest in QoS RELATED network
events and parameter thresholds. This allows the application to be mobility-aware, by using QoS API to
program how to adapt to changes in the environment.

• Mechanisms for capability and content negotiation. This will enable the WAP stack itself to
partner through its pieces to perceive and adapt to the mobility and the changes in network characteristics.
When certain information content is being delivered, the WAP stack negotiates with the device
capability to receive and display the contents. The negotiation decides for the feasibility of the transfer and
for the level of filtering that might be needed to deliver the information while maintaining QoS.

The first capability provides applications with the environment awareness needed to initiate QoS
adaptations. The second capability, on the other hand, provides the system with automated awareness
mechanisms not only of the environment, but also of the device capabilities and the characteristics of the
information content.
Another standardization effort similar to WAP is the Mobile Network Computer Reference Profile
(MNCRF), which is based on the NCRF standard developed by the Open Group. The first draft of the
standard has been released addressing the unique requirements of mobile network computing.

MOBILE ACCESS TO THE WORLD WIDE WEB

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1. Define W4.*
2. Define MOWSER.*
3. Write the web access optimization methods.
4. Define caching.*
5. What is Differencing?
6. Define protocol reduction.
7. Define Header reduction.
8. Define CSI & SSI.*
9. Explain Web Express. (6m)*
10. Explain in detail about Mobile access to the World Wide Web. (11m)*

More and more users are becoming increasingly dependent on information theyobtain from the
World Wide Web. Users are also demanding ubiquitous access,anytime, anywhere, to the information they
rely on. Several research efforts exploredthe problems associated with wireless access to the Web. Most
solutionsused a Web proxy that enabled Web browsing applications to function overwireless links without
imposing changes on browsers and servers.
Web proxiesare also used to prefetch and cache Web pages to the mobile client’s machine,to
compress and transform image pages for transmission over low-bandwidthlinks, and to support
disconnected and asynchronous browsing operations.

 The Wireless WWW(W4)

A prototype consisting of commercially available PDAs and a wirelessLAN has been used to
provide a “proof of concept” for the Wireless WorldWide Web (W4). A simplified version of Mosaic was
ported to the PDA forthe purpose of experimenting with response time performance and to sort outdesign
choices. A PDA cache was used to improve the performance.

 Dynamic Documents

The concept of dynamic documents was introduced in [66] as an approach toextending and
customizing the WWW for mobile computing platforms. Dynamicdocuments are programs executed on a
mobile platform to generate adocument; they are implemented as Tcl scripts as part of the browser client.
A modified version of the NCSA Mosaic browser was used to run the dynamicdocuments it
retrieves through a modified Tcl interpreter. The interpreter isdesigned to execute only commands that do
not violate safety.

By using dynamicdocuments, an adaptive e-mail browser that employs application-

specificcaching and prefetching is built. Both the browser and the displayed e-mailmessages are
dynamically customized to the mobile computing environment inwhich they run. Dynamic documents can
solve the problem of limited resourcesin the mobile host.

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For example, the Tcl script could be a filter that reducesan incoming image so that it fits the screen
size or resolution. Unfortunately,dynamic documents being placed at the client side are not wireless-media
sensitive.This is because filtering occurs after all transmitted information is receivedby the client.

Although caching and prefetching can alleviate some of thecommunication overhead, excess data
(that would be reduced by the dynamicdocument) is, however, communicated, leading to inefficient
utilization of thewireless bandwidth.

 Dynamic URLs
The Mosaic project [90] at the University of Washington extends standardclient browsers to
support dynamic URLs and active documents. The MosaicWeb client and the URL syntax are modified so
that when the user traversesa dynamic URL, the client resolves any references to dynamic information
itmay contain and sends the result back to the server. This is helpful in defininglocation-sensitive
resources.
Active documents are Web pages that notify theclient browser when dynamic information changes.
This feature also supportslocation-sensitive information by keeping the mobile client aware of
servicerelocation or of services offered by a mobile server.

 Mobile Browser (MOWSER)

In a design of a mobile-aware Web browser.The design isbased on a mediator server that filters
retrieved information according to thelimitations of the mobile unit. Color, resolution, display mode,
sound capability,and maximum file size are among the factors considered.

The browser,called MOWSER, connects to two servers in the fixed network. The first is
thepreference server that maintains the user profile; the second is a proxy serverthat implements all the
filtering indicated by the preference server.

MOWSERassumes that the user is aware of the mobile unit limitations, which in a waysacrifices
transparency. Similar to the dynamic document approach, MOWSERdoes not directly consider the
limitations of the wireless media (although themaximum file size indirectly preserves the limited
bandwidth).

WebExpress

It uses the proxy approach to intercept and control communications over the wireless link for the
purposes of reducing traffic volume and optimizing the communication protocol to reduce latency.

Two components are inserted into data path between the Web client and the Web server:

1. The Client Side Intercept (CSI) process that runs in the client mobile device
2. The Server Side Intercept (SSI) process that run within the wired and fixed network.

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