Research Plan: The second roundtable on the state of the Internet in September 1996 stated that the evolution of the Internet will follow three paths: multimedia, multicast, and mobility. This project combines two of the three evolution paths: multicast and mobility. Laptop and palmtop computers are now available at affordable prices; studies indicate that laptop computers are currently 35% of computer sales. With the explosive interest in laptop computers, there is now the desire for continuous Internet access no matter where users are. In other words, users desire an Internet version of the cellular telephone. Multicasting capability (transmitting a message to a group of hosts instead of a single host) are an important facility on the Internet. Thousands of users currently obtain data from the MBONE or multicast backbone through its numerous multicasting applications (e.g., video-conferencing system). Furthermore, since a multicasting facility is part of the next version of the Internet Protocol (IPv6), even more users will begin using multicasting applications on a regular basis. This project concerns both mobility and multicasting. The Internet Engineering Task Force lists multicasting as a desired service in our future mobile environment. However, the current Internet protocol for mobile hosts does not handle multicasting and the current Internet multicasting protocol does not transmit messages to mobile hosts. This project is to develop protocols that will allow mobile hosts to transmit and receive multicast messages in the Internet efficiently. For more information, see http://cs.ua.edu/faculty/camp/camp.html/mobi-arch.html Education Plan: The education aspect of this project revolves around the ``women in computing'' issue. Over the past year, we have been exploring gender issues in computer science, since the decreasing percentages of women in our field is discouraging. During this project, we will initiate programs a t the university and in the community to try to reduce the decreasing female trend that we are seeing in our field. For more information, see http://cs.ua.edu/faculty/camp/camp.html/women.html
