Connecting Mobile Workstations to the Internet Over a Digital Cellular Telephone Network

Modern portable computers and wireless connections over a cellular telephone network have created a new platform for distributed information processing. We present a communication architecture framework which makes it possible to exploit the existing TCP/IP communication architecture but which also takes into account the specific features of wireless links. Our communication architecture is based on the principle of indirect interaction. The mediating interceptor, Mobile-Connection Host, is the bridge between the worlds of wireless and wireline communication. The interceptor also provides enhanced functionality that improves fault-tolerance and performance for applications aware of mobility. Prototypes of the architecture are implemented both for the Unix (Linux) and for the Windows (3.11) platform.