A flexible multiplexing mechanism for supporting quality of service in mobile environments

According to current trends in the area of mobile communication, mobile devices rapidly gain significance. These trends go hand in hand with the growing demand for a mobile and wireless access to a corporate network or to the Internet with those devices, which might be a laptop running common operating systems, a PDA, or a mobile phone using the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP). Depending on the actual location, there is a plethora of techniques that enable wireless communication. We propose a Management Entity that allows a seamless handover between different networking devices. The Management Entity uses multiplexing mechanisms inside the network layer and is affected by the MAC layer. In order to evaluate this management service, we are implementing a prototype for the Windows operating system. Therefore, we will be able to measure the impact of switching between two network devices on the behavior of higher layer protocols.