An Infrared Network for Mobile Computers

The PARCTAB infrared network provides a flexible infrastructure for research into wireless mobile computing. The network consists of a collection of room-sized cells each wired with a base station transceiver. Mobile computers communicate with transceivers through a carrier sense multiple access (CSMA) protocol and act as terminals for applications executing on remote hosts. Each mobile computer is represented by a proxy, or agent, accessible to applications at a fixed network address. In the PARCTAB system it is the agent that is responsible for delivering requests to its corresponding mobile computer, and tracking the mobile as it moves from cell to cell.