Delta service in a mobile file system client cache

This paper evaluates a delta service extension to a mobile file system cache developed in order to minimize the amount of data transferred over wireless communications links. Network bandwidth stands as one of the resource limitations impacting the design of mobile computer applications. At the mobile file system service level, caching provides resource conservation in distributed applications. This paper proposes a delta service to enhance caching services characteristic of mobile computer file systems. Well established mechanisms for sequence comparison and software configuration management, file deltas have applicability to mobile computer and distributed file system caching environments. Study of the delta service uses trace-driven simulation methodology incorporating traces obtained in a real world distributed environment. A delta service model will extend the mobile computer client cache model of various cache sizes in order to gauge the bandwidth savings on the link obtained by the delta service.