Networking Media Abstraction, Device Discovery, and Routing for the Pervasive Middleware PalCom

PalCom is a pervasive middleware that can be used to assemble services provided by networked devices into configurations, called assemblies, for specific use cases by the user. In this dissertation, we present the development of a networking media abstraction framework for PalCom that abstracts different network interfaces in a PalCom device to upper layers of PalCom. The media abstraction framework is documented in paper I. Over the media abstraction layer, we define a device discovery mechanism that enables a PalCom device to discover other devices on its local networks, where it has network interfaces, as well as across interconnected networks. The device discovery mechanism is documented in paper II. On top of the device discovery layer, we implemented support for distance vector routing that enables routing data among discovered devices via the least cost routes. The routing layer is documented in paper III. In the last phase of our work, we refined our device discovery mechanism for PalCom to include a distributed synchronization algorithm that two PalCom nodes can utilize to re-sync their exchanged views of the network to overcome possible loss of device discovery and undiscovery notifications over unreliable channels. The synchronization algorithm is documented in paper IV

Supporting Distance Vector Routing Over Device Discovery Flows in the Pervasive Middleware PalCom

PalCom is a pervasive middleware that enables users to combine services from different devices into assemblies, or usage scenarios. The mechanism of device discovery in PalCom builds an ad-hoc network of interconnected devices while replacing cross-network periodic keep-alive messages with timely forwarded events that notify devices about the discovery and undiscovery of each other. Moreover, the device discovery mechanism is decoupled from any specific routing decisions mechanism. In this paper, we present a design that builds on this flexibility to add distance vector routing to PalCom while inheriting the event based cross-network device discovery for updating routing tables on interacting devices. The proposed design has been implemented and evaluated against a network with links that continuously change their availability