Distribution Patterns for Mobile Internet Applications

Abstract

After the enormous success of the internet and mobile networks, the next upcoming boost for information technology will be the combination of both. But developing applications for this domain is challenging, because first, most mobile devices provide only small memory and processor footprints, prohibiting resource intensive code at client side and second, mobile networks offer only limited bandwidth, and the probability to connection losses is relatively high compared to wired networks. Selecting the appropriate software architecture in terms of distributing the functionality of the system between server and client device is crucial. Application distribution patterns, known from conventional system development, are analysed for their applicability for the mobile environment. After the more abstract analysis of the patterns, the IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) which is part of the current specification of 3G mobile networks is introduced and its support for different application distribution patterns is examined.