Middleware for multi-interfaces management through profiles handling

Mobile wireless technologies have seen an immense growth in the recent years. Different kink of wireless public access have become increasingly available in areas like airports, stations and shopping centers as well as at office or at home. Mobile terminal such as phone or laptop are often equipped with several network interfaces and may use several access networks such as UMTS, WiMAX, WiFi and BlueTooth; each of them can be attached to different Internet providers having different billing models and security levels. To allow mobile users to be always connected to the best available access network and maintain theirs connections when they switch from one network to another, several vertical handoff mechanisms have been recently proposed. Few of them deal properly with the cost in the decision process, which should be done at a per flow basis. Our current work focuses on an advanced middleware that allows, through a comprehensive profile management, the support of automatic interfaces configuration and per-flow interface selection taking into account preferences given by the terminal's owner and applications. As illustrative, we show how the proposed middleware allows cost effective management of a multi-interfaces terminals fleet through an easy to configure set of preferences and resources profiles.