Automatic Multi-Interface Management Through Profile Handling

In the recent years, wireless communication systems have received increased interest in commercial applications. Different kind of wireless public access have become increasingly available in various areas like airports, stations and shopping centers as well as at office or at home. Mobile terminals, such as phones or laptops, are often equipped with several network interfaces and may use simultaneously several access networks. For instance it is nowadays common to have UMTS, WiFi, BlueTooth, and even WiMAX interfaces on a single mobile device. Each of them can be attached to different Internet providers offering seamless connectivity, high-speed multimedia services with different billing models and security levels. In this paper, we focus on an advanced middleware that allows, through a comprehensive profile management, the support of automatic interface configuration and per-flow interface selection.The system takes into account preferences given by the terminals owner, the users and the applications. This middleware makes the terminal to be always “best” connected and provides service continuity in case of vertical handover. As illustration, we show how the proposed middleware allows cost-effective management of a fleet of terminals.