Overcoming the Network Bottleneck in Mobile Computing

Abstract

System designers have traditionally treated the network as an inexhaustible resource, focusing their efforts on optimizing CPU and storage usage. For instance, the popular NFS file system [8] supports diskless operation, thereby avoiding use of local secondary storage at the expense of increased network usage. But in mobile computing, it is the network, rather than CPU or storage, that will be the scarce resource. The time has come when we must treat the network as a first-class resource, expending the CPU and storage resources necessary to use it intelligently. In this paper we argue that prescient caching and smart scheduling are key techniques/or overcoming the network bottleneck. We use the Coda file system [9] as a case study to substantiate our position.