Analysis of movement and mobility of wireless network users

This paper describes a system developed for determining locations of devices on 802.11 wireless networks. Data representing 18,000 computers registered on Carnegie Mellon's Wireless Andrew is presented from traces taken in 2003 and 2005. Developers make many assumptions when creating applications for wearable and pervasive computers. The data collected by Locator@CMU provides a clearer understanding of large-scale wireless networks and their usage for implementing services and programs. Among the findings, we examine the mobility of a user as defined by percentage of time spent at their home site and favorite sites. Our results show that only a small number of wireless users exhibit high mobility and our data suggests that typical mobile users utilize the network only in a handful of sites. These basic patterns have remained steady over the past two years.