Mobile Computing

NOTE: The following set of questions help you develop better understanding of the subject. While
trying to answer these questions it will help understand the related concepts and objectivity.

1. Explain the active and passive discovery implementations of entity discovery in a service
discovery system.
2. What is registry based and non-registry based service discovery architectures? Present a
brief overview of cases of these service discovery architectures. Hint. Service Oriented
Architecture.
3. What are VLR and HLR and where these are located? Explain their need in GSM
network.
4. What approach does WebExpress follow to achieve energy and bandwidth efficiency?
5. What additional challenges are posed by middleware for mobile environments over their
traditional middleware for static connection distributed environment.
6. From the viewpoints of seek time and latency of server’s disk compare between:
I. Multiple disks with same speed and configuration
II. Different disk speed and configuration
7. What are the different indexing approaches used data dissemination in a wireless mobile
environment to optimize access and tuning times. Explain each briefly.
8. What is the effect on server’s “disc seek and access time” by having the sequence order
data stored on physical disk like the sequence order of data to be broadcasted?
9. Compare synchronous and asynchronous methods of update dissemination during
connection and disconnection situations?
10. Enumerate and explain in brief the Caching/replication issues to improve performance
and reduce service time in wireless mobile computing environment.
11. Define the term “Content Adaptation” in context of Mobile Computing. What are the
possible places at which the adaptation can be performed? What attributes can be
considered while working on content adaptation?
12. Summarize the Odyssey system based on the following: Applications it supports,
Adaptation strategies, Model, Mobile data.
13. In mobile environments the partition of functionality between client and server is not
clear and this resulted in Extended client-server model. As a result, the clients and servers
need to play different roles according to requirement. In this context compare between
Thin client architecture and Full client architecture focusing on aspects relevant to
mobile environment.
14. Summarize the various location management techniques that exploit locality, stability,
and CMR.
15. What is virtual mobility of servers? How does this help in minimizing the overhead of
application service handoffs for synchronous multi-server operations in a wireless
information system?
16. Classify the strong mobility and weak mobility.
17. What is route reply storm problem? How it can be sorted out?
18. What mechanism CMIP follows to reduce query delay and improve hit ratio while taking
care of usage of scarce resources?
19. Discuss the mechanism followed in Coda file system to support disconnections and weak
connectivity?
20. What is IOT? How it supports disconnections and weak connectivity?
21. What is the synchronous strategy of cache invalidation? Comment on the appropriateness
of AT strategy for sleeper clients.
22. What are the different indexing approaches used data dissemination in a wireless mobile
environment to optimize access and tuning times. Explain each briefly.
23. What are the two elementary operations involved in location management? Derive a cost
formula for calculating the total cost for a simple location management strategy.
24. Explain how the hidden terminal and exposed terminal problems can be dealt.
25. "What is the value addition after taking Mobile Computing Course?"
A 300 word write up covering the following aspects clearly mentioning each before the
beginning of your write up.
I. The level of exposure to the technologies involved in Mobile Computing --
3 to 4 points (40 words max.)
II. The applicability of the concepts in other domains of Mobile Computing
(list at least 3 with brief explanation about your ideas) 180 words max.
III. Your visualization (in terms of requirement, issues, and challenges) about
the next generation Mobile Computing -- 80 words max.
26. Compare between the replication and non-replication strategy for the case of users with
high LCMR and impact on lookup cost and update cost in each of the above strategies.
27. Performance of most location management techniques depend on the CMR. Outline the
different approaches to estimate the current value of the CMR. Suggest which means of
estimating CMR is suitable for users with large LCMR.
28. Define the following: Time-based, Movement-based, and Distance-based policies for
initiating
updates. Evaluate these policies for situations with high CMR and low CMR on the
following aspects: i. Update cost, ii. Lookup cost, iii. The total cost of location
management.
29. Suggest mechanism to minimize the overhead of application service handoffs while
supporting mobility of clients.
30. How the Rover toolkit supports application aware and application transparent adaptation
for mobile C/S applications?
31. Discuss the mechanism followed in Coda file system to support disconnections and weak
connectivity?
32. FAs are not required in Mobile IPv6. Also, automatic HA discovery is possible. Explain
why HAs are still needed in Mobile IPv6.
33. What characteristics distinguish mobile computing from distributed computing?
34. Differentiate between the WiMax and WiFi technologies.
35. What are the different mobile computing models? Explain each in brief.
36. Explain how the hidden terminal and exposed terminal problems can be dealt.
37. Write note on Mobile IPV6.
38. Summarize the file system support for weak connectivity.
39. Compare between I-TCP and S-TCP.
40. What will be the implication on the amount of message transmission if the mobility of an
object is high while it is located far away from its HLR. Suggest a mechanism to fix this.
41. What is the method of Automatic Home Agent Discovery? When it is used and how this
method works?
42. Is Adaption reactive or proactive! What will be the implication in the cases of proactive
and reactive adaptation in mobile computing?
43. Describe the WebExpress Intercept model.
44. Write note on Mobile IPV6.
45. Consider the following situation: “User X” calls “User Y” in a distant cell. “User Y”
moves very often but inter-region cell crossings are infrequent. Suggest a location
information maintenance scheme to optimize update cost and lookup cost.
46. Summarize the various location management techniques that exploit locality and
stability.
47. What are the different indexing approaches used data dissemination in a wireless mobile
environment to optimize access and tuning times. Explain each briefly.
48. Explain the concept of HTTP tunneling.
49. Define the terms Terminal mobility and Personal mobility in the context of Mobile
computing.
50. How the Web Proxy approach helps web browsing in a resource constrained wireless-
mobile environment?
51. Explain in brief Rover’s RDO architecture.
52. Comment on the appropriateness of the following methods Caching and Partitions as
enhancements to hierarchical schemes. If appropriate, state when and if not why.
53. Explain in brief the following with respect to concurrent transactions:
I. The lost update problem
II. The dirty read problem
54. How the Rover toolkit supports application aware and application transparent adaptation
for mobile C/S applications?
55. Why the TCP mechanism for wired network is not suitable for wireless networks? What
are the basic mechanisms used to deal with those issues?
56. How is the application-aware adaptation realized in Odyssey?

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