CM1: Communication Monitor for Applications Adaptive to Execution Environments

In this paper, we propose an architecture for environmental information services that make it possible for applications to adapt in dynamically changing environments. These services provide information necessary for applications to adapt to its environment. Unlike other information services, the information provided includes not only raw information but also abstract or policy-applied information. The variety of information enables applications to choose suitable level of information. A simple adaptive application can use highly abstract information instead of detailed raw information required by complicated adaptive applications. The policy-applied information enables adaptive applications to share decisions by the user and cooperate among them. Applications can efficiently adapt to changes in the environment since our architecture provides notification of these changes. This notification does not disturb applications since the conditions for the notification are controlled by each application. We apply the proposed architecture to a mobile internetworking environment and present a prototype implementation of environmental information services called CM1. We also discuss our primary evaluation of CM1 with the Personal File System, which is a network file system with dynamic adaptation features, for mobile internetworking environments. key words: mobile computing, dynamic adaptation, networking