System support for mobile computing

Today a mobile user wants to connect his portable computer: remotely to the central database at home, locally to the printer on the spot and globally to the world-wide-web. To achieve this, different connection lines are available: wireless networks for connecting out in the fields, ISDN or analogue telephone lines when residing in a hotel, Ethernet access at the customer's site. But this connectivity raises a lot of questions, about technical, security or accounting issues. This paper presents the architecture of an environment aiming to support mobile users and dealing with the given problems. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd