| The development and proliferation of wireless technologies has revolutionized communications. With the advent of the cellular phone, an untethered, mobile lifestyle has become both possible and prevalent. As a result, many users are coming to expect and demand ubiquitous connectivity for phone service, as well as Internet-related applications like e-mail and web browsing. Unfortunately, the existing cellular infrastructure is ill-suited for high-bandwidth, data-centric applications, and the traditional Internet provides inadequate support for highly mobile devices.; The future Wireless Internet will consist of a dense overlapping mesh of access networks. Connectivity will become a commodity, no longer a primary concern for mobile devices. Rather, competing access providers will be forced to differentiate themselves with value-added services, empowering the mobile user with a wider choice between providers. With choice, however, comes complexity. Navigating future wireless networks will require more intelligent approaches to handover. Mobile devices will require access to information describing the services offered by each provider, as well as a means to incorporate this information into a selection process that correctly addresses the application- and system-level requirements of future mobile users.; This dissertation addresses the core problem of how to bridge the gap between current mobile systems and the immobile Internet. We focus primarily on enabling-technologies in the access network and at the mobile device. More specifically, we address the problem of providing security for mobility-related services running in the access network, we present a novel service that dynamically builds a description of available services in neighboring networks that can be used by mobiles to make more informed handover decisions, and we explore how this service-level information can be used in concert with application-level requirements to maximize user-level utility as part of an integrated approach to empowering mobile users in future wireless networks. |
