Why Seamless? Towards Exploiting Wlan-Based Intermittent
Connectivity on the Road
Bibliographic Entry
Jörg Ott, Dirk Kutscher; Why
Seamless? Towards Exploiting Wlan-Based Intermittent
Connectivity on the Road; TERENA Networking
Conference 2004; June 2004
Abstract
This paper discusses new mobile usage scenarios for WLAN
technologies and presents an architecture that is based on
the notion of intermittent
connectivity instead of seamless
connectivity. The Drive-thru
Internet approach is intended to support
Internet applications of mobile users in environments
where no permanent connectivity is available, a common
case for nomadic users. We have chosen the extreme
scenario of users in vehicles moving at high speed on the
road and provide connectivity by means of WLAN access
points. Our service architecture takes the transient
character of local network access into account and
provides for persistent transport connections and
application layer mobility. From reviewing common
Internet applications, we derive application-specific
extensions to optimise various kinds of protocols and
provide a concrete usage example. We also discuss the
relation of Drive-thru Internet to technologies such as
network layer mobility, authenticated network access,
common WLAN hot spot setups, and WLAN roaming.