Peer-to-Peer Cooperative Caching in Mobile Environments

Abstract

An infrastructure-based mobile environment is formed with a wireless network connecting mobile hosts (MHs) and mobile support stations (MSSs). MHs are clients equipped with portable devices, such as laptops, personal digital assistants, cellular phones, and so on, while MSSs are stationary servers providing information access for the MHs residing in their service areas. With the recent widespread deployment of contemporary peer-to-peer (known as P2P throughout this chapter) wireless communication technologies, such as IEEE 802.11 (IEEE Standard 802-11, 1997) and Bluetooth (Bluetooth SIG, 2004), coupled with the fact that the computation power and storage capacity of most portable devices have been improving at a fast pace, a new information sharing paradigm known as P2P information access has rapidly taken shape. The MHs can share information among themselves rather than having to rely solely on their connections to the MSS. This article reviews a hybrid communication framework - that is, mobile cooperative caching - which combines the P2P information access paradigm into the infrastructure-based mobile environment.