Concurrent online tracking of mobile users

Abstract

This paper deals with the problem of maintaining a distributed directory server, that enables us to keep track of mobile users in a distributed network in the presence of concurrent requests. The paper uses the graph-theoretic concept of regional matching for implementing efficient tracking mechanisms. The communication overhead of our tracking mechanism is within a polylogarithmic factor of the lower bound. 1 Introduction Since the primary function of a communication network is to provide communication facilities between users and processes in the system, one of the key problems such a network faces is the need to be able to Department of Mathematics and Lab. for Computer Science, M.I.T., Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. E-mail: baruch@theory.lcs.mit.edu. Supported by Air Force Contract TNDGAFOSR-86-0078, ARO contract DAAL03-86-K0171, NSF contract CCR8611442, DARPA contract N00014-89J -1988, and a special grant from IBM. y Departmentof Applied Mathematicsand Computer Science, The Weizm...