New Trends and Solutions in Mobile Business

Nowadays the business medium requires anytime and anywhere connectivity. In an increasingly competitive business environment, more and more organizations need fast responses and instant results. Therefore, mobility changes the way companies do business; instant messaging, voice services, real-time LAN access, network access while traveling are transforming the business environment. In this context, WLANs are critical from the business point of view. The effectiveness with which employees make decisions drives to the success or failure of the business; thus, the business must enable employees to access the information needed to exceed corporate expectations. This article presents the key characteristics of the mobile business and analyzes a possible solution offered by a giant of the networking industryWLANs, Mobility, Communications, Mobile Business, Security, 802.11n

A Survey on Handover Management in Mobility Architectures

This work presents a comprehensive and structured taxonomy of available techniques for managing the handover process in mobility architectures. Representative works from the existing literature have been divided into appropriate categories, based on their ability to support horizontal handovers, vertical handovers and multihoming. We describe approaches designed to work on the current Internet (i.e. IPv4-based networks), as well as those that have been devised for the "future" Internet (e.g. IPv6-based networks and extensions). Quantitative measures and qualitative indicators are also presented and used to evaluate and compare the examined approaches. This critical review provides some valuable guidelines and suggestions for designing and developing mobility architectures, including some practical expedients (e.g. those required in the current Internet environment), aimed to cope with the presence of NAT/firewalls and to provide support to legacy systems and several communication protocols working at the application layer

Towards a wireless local area network security control framework for small, medium and micro enterprises in South Africa

There is little literature available that is specific to the use of wireless local area network [WLAN) security among small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs) in South Africa. This research study developed a framework which may be used by SMMEs for the purposes of securing their WLANs. In view of the fact that the aim of the study was to develop a system for improving information technology security, the study followed a design science approach. A literature review was conducted on security control framework standards and WLAN technologies. The needs of SMMEs regarding WLANs were also established. The result of this process was an artefact in the form of a WLAN Security Control Framework for securing WLANs for SMMEs in South Africa. The suitability of the framework was validated by means of a focus group

CHARACTERIZATION OF HOTSPOT COVERAGE PLAN IN 2.4/ 5GHZ FREQUENCY BAND (NNAMDI AZIKIWE UNIVERSITY, NIGERIA, AS A CASE STUDY)

Research and tertiary institutions today uses wireless connectivity owing to the benefits of mobility flow-awarecommunication and flexibility advantages generally. In this case, mobility computing involving the use of smartdevices, laptops, wifi-desktops, etc, largely depends on a deployed hotspot infrastructure. In particular, the physicalposition of the mobile system (and hence of the user) and the hotspot infrastructure design layout are fundamentalconsiderations for service efficiency. While previous works have focused on user position estimation, signal strengthquality and network QoS, this work leverages the contemporary challenges of network connectivity in tertiaryinstitutions in Nigeria with respect to optimal coverage and cost minimization. Using Nnamdi Azikiwe University-Unizik, Awka as testbed, we carried out a study on hotspot/WLAN IEEE 802.11 deployments while devising a costeffective coverage plan in 2,4/5GHz frequency band. A mathematical model on cost optimization for WLANHotpot project processes was developed using Linear programming, the installation procedure, coverage plan basedon specifications of the deployment hardware, and data security were covered in this work. Consequently, from themodel, we argue that with careful selection of optimization criteria in the deployment, an efficient design cost plan,and QoS, could eliminate possible trade-offs in the deployment contexts by over 95%.Keywords: Mobility, Flow-aware, Hotspot, Infrastructure, Optimization, Design, Minimizatio

An efficient genetic algorithm for large-scale transmit power control of dense and robust wireless networks in harsh industrial environments

The industrial wireless local area network (IWLAN) is increasingly dense, due to not only the penetration of wireless applications to shop floors and warehouses, but also the rising need of redundancy for robust wireless coverage. Instead of simply powering on all access points (APs), there is an unavoidable need to dynamically control the transmit power of APs on a large scale, in order to minimize interference and adapt the coverage to the latest shadowing effects of dominant obstacles in an industrial indoor environment. To fulfill this need, this paper formulates a transmit power control (TPC) model that enables both powering on/off APs and transmit power calibration of each AP that is powered on. This TPC model uses an empirical one-slope path loss model considering three-dimensional obstacle shadowing effects, to enable accurate yet simple coverage prediction. An efficient genetic algorithm (GA), named GATPC, is designed to solve this TPC model even on a large scale. To this end, it leverages repair mechanism-based population initialization, crossover and mutation, parallelism as well as dedicated speedup measures. The GATPC was experimentally validated in a small-scale IWLAN that is deployed a real industrial indoor environment. It was further numerically demonstrated and benchmarked on both small- and large-scales, regarding the effectiveness and the scalability of TPC. Moreover, sensitivity analysis was performed to reveal the produced interference and the qualification rate of GATPC in function of varying target coverage percentage as well as number and placement direction of dominant obstacles. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved