Is the Future Really Always-On?
Mitchel Gardner, C. Gibbs, T. van Do · Institution of Engineering and Technology eBooks · 2003
This chapter has described the work done by the EURESCOM P1003 project to understand the used needs for future always-on network services. It has been shown that although AO services are starting to appear there is still some way to go before the network technology and on-line services fully exploit the characteristics of being always-on. An important issue in the explosive growth in mobile devices, which is leading to the scenario of heterogeneous networks and devices. The user is now 'always-on' not only from a unique device but also from a variety of devices such as mobile or fixed telephone, a stationary PC, a laptop computer, etc. The goal is to ensure that the user's services and applications can be presented and moved smoothly and naturally between devices. This has led to the development of device-unifying service on the EURESCOM P1001 project. The key difference with DUS is to allow always-on service sessions to be dynamically switched between different devices and networks, and to do this in a completely seamless way, so that data sessions such as Web and e-mail are treated in the same way as multimedia sessions such as voice and videoconferencing. This chapter has described the scope and requirements for the DUS. Currently the project is developing the core DUS platform and a number of usage trials by the project partners are planned to fully evaluate the concept in use.