Abstract
Thin clients are lightweight devices from which all hardware, not related to input and output, is removed. Applications are executed on remote servers that render the graphical output and send it back to the client. As the reaction on user events can appear on the screen only after a two-way path delay, thin client computing can suffer from a high latency that degrades the user experience. We therefore propose that the application follows the user through the network by migrating to a server near enough to the user.
In this paper, a theoretical model and heuristics are presented to efficiently select servers for mobile users, in order to minimize the number of migrations and the corresponding application downtime. A sample scenario is presented, which clearly exposes the trade-off between the number of migrations and the average client-server latency. We then detail a theoretical model to determine the optimal allocation of applications to servers, in order to minimize the number of handovers. This model is based on the knowledge of the exact user movements and is only useful in an off-line setting. As this is impossible in real-time, several heuristics are presented. Their performance is compared and validated against the theoretical model.
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Simoens, P., Deboosere, L., De Winter, D., De Turck, F., Dhoedt, B., Demeester, P. (2007). Optimization Models for Application Migration to Support Mobile Thin Clients. In: GarcÃa-Vidal, J., Cerdà -Alabern, L. (eds) Wireless Systems and Mobility in Next Generation Internet. EuroNGI 2006. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4396. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-70969-5_19
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-70969-5_19
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
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