Hop-by-hop toward future mobile broadband IP

We try to give some perspectives on likely trends in future wireless broadband networking. The treatment is an exploration of some technologies; due to the requirement to cover the topic from a broad perspective, it is not possible to go into technical details. We review current developments toward future mobile broadband networks, and then present the 4G paradigm of trying to combine heterogeneous networks, both cellular wireless hotspots and sensor networks, together with Internet protocols. We show how different networks play their own roles in the emerging infrastructure so that we can hop by hop wave the broadband network from mobile devices toward the fiber optic core network.     

Providing network connectivity for small appliances: a functionallyminimized embedded Web server

There is a strong trend toward embedding Internet capabilities into electronics and everyday appliances. We introduce the results from a research project where we have been working toward implementing a functionally minimized Web server on silicon. Although most embedded Internet appliances will use a microcontroller and software to enable TCP/IP and HTTP support, we argue that there are many applications where a hardware-based approach is more suitable. Our WebChip approach is a family of IPv6-compatible solutions toward the realization of embedded and minimized Web systems. The core parts of the implementation are a C-code library and VHDL code implementation. The solution is tested with an FPGA and can be later embedded into various ASIC chips. We argue that this approach is also commercially viable since the VHDL code can be delivered as an intellectual property block