Hydra: a new approach for integrating various wireless environments

In this paper we present the design of Hydra, an experimental Linux platform for integrating various wireless environments. Currently, mobile devices are often equipped with many network interfaces, which may be of different access technologies, like wireless, cellular and wired. Applications have different requirements, which results in different network preferences. Also, the network preferences of some applications change over time and they would like to use multiple access technologies to satisfy their needs best. Hydra is an attempt to provide users control such that they may manage their own and available devices in a more flexible way than the existing networks are offering. With Hydra, there is a way for applications to provide the operating system, features of the environment they are interested in. Also, there is a mechanism that enables applications to track their environment. The biggest feature is the ability to integrate multiple wireless technologies.