Code generating routers: a network-centric approach to mobile code

Inexpensive wireless networks have transformed once autonomous mobile devices into nodes of large distributed systems. However, existing approaches to executing mobile code do not fully exploit the available networking infrastructure. We present an infrastructure-based network computing approach. Instead of embedding a JIT compiler component into every mobile device, we shift the mobile code optimization and compilation effort to the networking infrastructure. This conserves considerable resources on the mobile device, in terms of processor time, memory, and battery consumption. By serving as a transparent proxy, the network infrastructure intercepts mobile code returned from servers and and substitutes it for optimized native code which is sent to the PDA for immediate execution. To evaluate the feasibility of our network-based compilation architecture, we have implemented a research prototype.