Smart download on the go: a wireless Internet application for music distribution over heterogeneous networks

The maturing distributed file sharing technology implemented by Napster has first enabled the dissemination of musical content in digital forms, permitting to costumers an ubiquitous reach to stored music files from around the world. In the post-Napster era, the Apple iTunes online music service has hit a record share of 16.7% in the MP3 player market. This is only the most prominent example of the success of digital music distribution based on packet network technologies. However, to the best of our knowledge, the most noteworthy aspect of the success of digital music distribution is that little about this music delivery technology is really new. To deeply change the trend of this technology business, we claim that wireless technologies must come on the scene. In particular, the digital music delivery model may take benefit by the integration of the wired Internet with a plethora of several, alternative wireless technologies, such as, for example, WiFi, WPAN and 3G. In this challenging context, we have developed a wireless Internet application designed to support the distribution of digital music to handheld devices. The main novelty of our software application amounts to its ability in providing a seamless music delivery service even in the presence of horizontal and vertical handoffs. We have taken measurements from real-world experiments that show the efficacy of the system we have developed.