MARE: Resource Discovery and Configuration in Ad Hoc Networks

The emergence of personal portable devices, such as PDA's and Mobile phones, with considerable processing and communication capabilities, has led to a desire to use various combinations of these devices together to achieve new and as yet unrealised operations. Not only are mobile devices expected to offer conventional facilities like email and web browsing but also more demanding multimedia applications. Attaining these operations within a fixed network environment with high-power workstations is non-trivial; however, highly dynamic ad hoc environments further complicate this scenario. In particular, a means of discovering available devices and enabling manipulation of them within a highly active environment is required. In this paper we present a novel architecture called MARE that facilitates the detection and manipulation of resources in ad hoc environments.