Abstract

In future Ubiquitous Computing Infrastructure, a growing data demand from users particularly of mobile devices will create further pressures on infrastructure to deliver information at the right time. We introduce the concept of "data roving", where smart infrastructure predicts the likely information needs and replicates data to parts of infrastructure in the vicinity of the user concerned. We propose this concept to reduce the impact of congestion, reduce pressure on finite infrastructure resources, and improve data access performance for the mobile user. Unknown quantities at this stage include the efficiency of anticipating information needs of users, and whether this offers a performance advantage over more straightforward demand-based caching. The main contribution of this paper is a description of how a network infrastructure could be used in predicting information needs and to support replication of data to enhance performance.