Mobility support in unified communication networks

Rapid advances in communication networks and device technologies have enabled people with powerful means of communications. It is common for any individual to be associated with a number of heterogeneous communication devices (such as phones, pagers, PDAs) or a variety of applications (such as e-mail, instant messaging, or chat-rooms). This phenomenon has spurred a great demand for unifie dcommunication [20] services which integrate one's various communication mechanisms in a meaningful and seamless fashion. To meet this demand, the research community and communication industry are experimenting and building Internet-based, unified communication network systems (UCN) in which heterogeneous devices are unified for individuals and access networks are linked together through a core IP network. In this paper, we investigate the mobility issues in UCN systems. We discuss traditional mobility problems such as personal mobility and terminal mobility in the new UCN context, and present our design, analysis, and implementation of a new form of mobility in UCNs, service mobility [12] where active services can be retained across heterogeneous devices and networks.