Dimensioning aWide-Area Thin-Client Computing Network Supporting Mobile Users

Battery life-time is a big concern for mobile users. Their devices can save energy when the applications are executed on a remote server, since they only have to display the output on the screen. This method of moving away the calculation logic from the end-user to a server, is the principle on which thin-clients are based. To extend the use of thin-clients to mobile users, the application should be executed on a server, close enough to the user at any time, to guarantee a good responsiveness, i.e. low delay. This paper presents a model to determine the optimal application server locations in a given network topology to support mobile users of thin-clients. Two heuristics are presented to reduce calculation time.