Analysis of Connectivity and Session Management for Mobile Peer-to-Peer Applications

Mobile applications utilizing wireless networks are growing in popularity as increasingly capable terminals and advanced networking technologies emerge. In order to provide a seamless user experience, applications must be able to rely on an intelligent mobile middleware that hides the complexity of underlying technologies and allows developers to solve application-specific problems instead. A middleware should take care of generic networking functionality such as management of user commmities, signalling for sessions, interaction with content-licensing services, and management of the terminal's networking resources. This paper focuses on two major components of a prototype peer-to-peer networking middleware: a solution for connectivity management and another for session management. First, the connectivity management solution is discussed. The solution formalizes cross-layer resource optimization and employs upgradeable state machines to make connectivity selections based on context data and user preference, aiming to always provide the best connection for different communications and keep the system extensible. Second, the session management solution is discussed. The solution enables installation of missing software dynamically on a terminal when another user proposes a mutual application session. This greatly increases users' possibilities to initiate sessions with each other. In this paper, design principles behind each of the novel solutions are studied, their prototype implementations are evaluated on the Symbian smartphone platform, and they are contrasted with existing technologies. A lightweight Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) stack has also been implemented as a component for the middleware. Future work concerning the connectivity and session management solutions includes evaluation of the technologies in more realistic settings than was possible within the work for this paper.