PushFS: A Smart Push File Service Model for Ubiquitous Storage

Abstract

The traditional file service is no longer sufficient for providing reliable and smart service to users as roaming in ubiquitous computing environments. In this paper, we propose a smart push file service model, called PushFS, which employs a push-oriented file service for ubiquitous storage. The design of PushFS introduces user-profiles to identify the environmental-context and file-semantics for retrieve, and hoards virtual directories and virtual files into lightweight working sets on-demand. We indicate that the dynamic metadata-aware file selection and organization capability increases efficiency of the file service and improves the tradeoff between proactivity and transparency. We then implement a prototype system to validate our model, which shows that PushFS is adequate to ubiquitous storage with high efficient and proactive file service.