Smart edge server: beyond a wireless access point

Abstract

Wireless access at cafes, airports, homes and businesses have proliferated all over the globe with several different Wireless Internet Service Providers. Similarly, digital media has created a paradigm shift in media processing resulting in a complete change in media usage models, revamped existing businesses and has introduced new industry players. We believe there is a tremendous opportunity for application and system services at the intersection of the above two domains for exploiting the wireless connectivity to provide ease of use in handling media. In this paper, we propose a feature-rich, secure wireless service delivery framework over enhanced public access points (called Smart Edge Servers), which provides the right platform for deployment of specialized services to the mobile users. The Smart Edge Server provides secure wireless access to the clients, has sophisticated media handling and storage capabilities and uses advanced techniques to manage resources available to it, such as bandwidth, power and the type of connectivity. A prototype implementation of our Smart Edge Server has been built that implements all the features discussed above.