Mobile Computing Books

Mobile commerce offers the hope of faster access to information for the consumer. M-Commerce builds on both internet and wireless communication devices. Internet servers push small applications to WiFi devices and these applications, in turn, make information requests through WiFi portals back to the server. The WiFi interface improves speed to acquire information for the consumer increasing the likelihood of a purchase; the WiFi interface can submit billing information for payment processing with one tap to confirm credit card usage for bill payment; a confirmation code is displayed on the WiFi device and used to validate pickup of the merchandise; and speed is the motivating factor like the fast food chain in time performance. If by the middle of the decade, "the only way to reach your customers is via the internet, you'll be limiting your customer base". M-commerce brings the store to the consumer wirelessly and it assists the consumer in price comparison. The consumer can talk directly to the WiFi device reducing time to navigate menu selection. Sophisticated voice recognition software will eliminate the need to display all available choices. Instead, the software will use context and subject matter as it relates to voice interpretation too determine choice.

Location commerce is the result of the law. All cell phones or devices capable of making a call must be capable for an external call center too pinpoint a caller within a few feet. Position based commerce will become the primary source of new business referrals. As the consumer moves from one zone to another information is served up to the WiFi interface from local based directories. The user will enter in what they want and a list of services based on proximity will be offered through their PDA. National chains will be able to offer localized pricing of their products and services. The localized directories will be able to determine availability and make referrals to other stores within a certain mile radius, if the product is unavailable. The idea is that the quicker you get your customer the merchandise, the more you will sell.

A decentralized Transportation Wifi network potentially offers a massive opportunity. Suppose, each car was installed with a WiFi device that could communicate with car around it, accessing: speed, breaking, turning, and sudden stops. Potentially, the Wifi device could stop all accidents involving abrupt slow downs in traffic. Additionally, the auto wifi device could communicate with Wifi portal along the road querying for restaurant prices and availability, sleeping arrangements and prices, and music downloads. Billboards being replaced by high speed Wifi portals and massive internet servers bring services too consumers on the road.

The book presents a wide range of business cases as well as scenarios where wireless technology is used or can be used. The author sometimes gets too excited about the potential of the technologies involved but she proves that, at least in some areas, wireless is revolutionizing business, creating business value by providing convenience, mobility, agility and improved data accuracy.

I probably sound like a paid endorser, but the truth is, this book is fantastic. It's written beautifully, contains riveting stories, and is packed with insights, ideas, trends, and more. It's written for anyone in business ready to cash in on the future. Wireless is the next big trend. This book shows you how to surf it to the bank. Get it. Get it right now. -- Joe Vitale, author of way too many books to list here, ...

I hesitated before buying Going Wireless because I didn't want a book about
how wireless works. Then I stumbled on the Newsweek review, read a couple
excerpts on the Going Wireless website and then bought it. My hunch was
right. This book is a real winner by cutting out the "geek speak" and
instead showing me directly how wireless can benefit my business. I highly
recommend it.

Easton takes a very difficult subject and pieces together how wireless will make our lives simpler and faster still. We can get what we want, when we want it. We can make an order from a wireless hand held device and pick it up within minutes.

This book is made to order if you want to see where wireless is going. Easton is well researched and writes to inform.

My approach to this book has been dictated from curiosity for this new technology more than for the implementation side of it. Mobile IP is a field where I have very little knowledge of this technology and needed to gain some background on it. My point of view will therefore ignore the configuration examples used in the book.

The authors did a great job in writing the book in a very simple English and using an informal style, which helps the reading by not making the text too tedious.

The first couple of chapters gave me a good overview of the basic principles of Mobile IP. The illustrations used in the book are very helpful to better explain the concepts described in the text. Some were a little too confusing because of all the acronyms and several times I had to give a quick glance at the pictures to resume myself the situation. The third chapter goes on with security issues that come back in almost all of the rest of the book. The fourth chapter goes in detail on how to set up a lab environment to apply the concepts explained in the rest of the book.

The following chapters show some basic case studies of mobile IP applications: Campus Mobility, Metro Mobility and Cisco Mobile Networks. These chapters require a good knowledge of tunneling, VPNs, routing and wireless concepts.

The last two chapters were more interesting for me as chapter 8 talked about scalability of the mobile IP solutions and the differences between different forms of IP addressing. The last part of the chapter shows some basic troubleshooting techniques. Chapter 9 called "A look ahead" is very valuable because it describes the various techniques discussed to bring the mobile IP technology to meet the IPv6 standard and what the idea of Cisco is in this area.

The book is thought as a companion book for studying and has the usual end-of-chapter questions that help the reader to check his understanding of the last things learned. The answers given in the Appendix A to all the questions are very explicative and help to review the entire concepts seen in the book.

A good book that has given me the basic understanding of the theory of Mobile IP. I suggest it both for those who want to have a look at Mobile IP and also to those who want a deeper understanding of the topic. A real-world case study would have given this book a top class touch.

Mobile IP Technology and Applications (ISBN 158705132x) is an introduction to IP mobility using an open-standard protocol called Mobile IP. There is a distinction made between true mobility and just "traveling" between different connections. This protocol enables users to keep their IP, stay connected, and allow others to find them while roaming between networks and equipment. In addition, detailed examples using real-world situations illustrate the applications of this technology. Advanced topics include reverse tunneling, firewalls, NAT, VPNs, authentication, scalability, and QoS.

Stefan Raab and Madhavi W. Chandra, authors, share their experience designing and developing network solutions using Mobile IP. Their credentials are impressive and give the learner confidence in the information they are imparting.

This book is designed for network administrators who are familiar with IP routing, protocols, applications, and Cisco IOS. Even though the real-world situations are generic, the configuration, troubleshooting, and management are explained using Cisco IOS. IT personnel who want to implement mobile technology can definitely benefit from this book as it explains the basics thoroughly before giving detailed examples and explanations. The index is complete; there is not a glossary. At the end of each chapter are review questions, so this book could easily be used in a classroom or in self-study. There are two appendices: one contains the answers to the chapter questions and the other contains the SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) MIB (Management Information Base) objects supported by Cisco IOS Mobile IP.

Raab and Chandra organized their book into nine chapters, each of which is a facet of Mobile IP. After an introduction of concepts and requirements of mobility and wireless networking, a detailed discussion of the Mobile IP protocol includes features, functions, and components. As with any network today, there are security concerns with protocol authentication and dynamic keying. The material presented in these early chapters is used in the scenarios in following chapters.

Mobility solution examples are provided for basic topologies, client-based Mobile IP, high availability, AAA servers, reverse tunneling, firewall and NAT traversal, and integration with VPN technologies. Basic configuration is introduced which leads into integration topics of redundancy, QoS, and VPN. The management and operation discussion leads to Home Address, scalability, and server management.

Future trends and uses for Mobile IP conclude the topics of this book: layer 2 integration challenges, Mobile IPv6, unstructured mobility, and ad hoc networking.

This book follows the linear, logical model of textbook organization that progresses from basic facts, to advanced topics, and concludes with end-to-end solutions. The authors feel that this book also enables someone to jump in at any chapter and navigate the subject by features and environment in which they are interested. They have created cross-references to assist readers who do not want to use the book in linear form. This works well for users with previous knowledge of the subject.

The examples, figures, and illustrations are clear, concise, and designed to help learners understand a complex subject. Cisco IOS knowledge is prerequisite, although the authors' expertise and explanations give logic behind implementation and options.
This book deserves a rating of 5 (highest) and is recommended for IT personnel wanting to move into true "mobility."

Mobile IP Technology and Applications
Reviewer: Glenn Bradley, Senior Network Engineer
Reviewer Certification: CCDA, CCNA, CCNP, ISSP

The authors have given us a text that serves as an excellent introduction to Mobile IP technologies. Using real-world scenarios limited enough in scope, they convey how Mobile IP is currently being used and hint at the size of an offering it is destined to become.

I would have liked to see a little more focus on the trend of Mobile IP in the `contained' workplace. However, the examples of PDA's, laptop's, fleet service applications, etc. are well laid out, easy to understand and presented in an order that leads the reader from an introductory approach through some reasonably high level discussion.

Like most recent Cisco Press books I have been looking at there is a minimum of page-flipping, back and forth to get from the text to the figures and tables. This may not seem like a monumental accomplishment but if you go through as many books as I do; the little things can become quite annoying. I should also mention here that another of my peeves; poor editing, is NOT present. Good solid references, annotations, etc.

If you are planning on getting into the Mobile IP world, or already have and feel you've missed something, I would highly recommend this book. It is actually an enjoyable read (for those of us who enjoy technical books) and I believe you'll find yourself breezing through so keep a highlighter or some post-it's near by to mark the high points.

In summary; a well written, readable text beneficial for entry level `enquiring minds' but thorough enough to serve as a reference for folks who are already deploying this technology.

Good book, strong coverage of Mobile IP. I definitely recommend this book to someone who is interested in Mobile IP basics, or who is planning to deploy a mobile IP solution. The authors build from the basics quite well. The first couple chapters effectively present the basics of Mobile IP. As should be expected, a basic routing knowledge is assumed on the part of the reader. This is certainly appropriate for a topic such as mobile IP. The background on wireless technologies provides enough detail to support the subsequent discussion, but does not become a pure tutorial on wireless infrastructure. The illustrations and examples are straightforward, and add value to the discussion.
The organization of the chapters allows the experienced reader to skip forward to an appropriate chapter. The discussion on the lab configuration is particularly helpful. It saves much of the time we often spend defining the lab environment to be practical and yet reflect enough of the real world to be useful. The evolution to larger, real world class environments is certainly of value. The insight to actual deployment of a solution helps to bring lab data into context. The examples and considerations in the latter part of the book, chapters 5-8, address many of the issues actual deployments may encounter. The ability to address as many of these issues during planning, instead of discovering them during the initial deployment certainly can make enabling a mobile solution less challenging.
Chapter 9 was of specific interest because we have a pending migration to IPv6. Any amount of insight into IPv6 world is of value.
On the negative side, the title is slightly misleading; the "Applications" referred to in the title is the application of mobile IP, vice applications that run over mobile IP. The subtitle is to the point "Real-world solutions for Mobile IP configuration and management."

I like the approach that this book takes in laying out the principal concepts of Mobile IP. There is good discussion about many of the realities of useful mobile ip implementation including handoff scenarios, address bindings and security associations. The latter chapters will be especially useful for those who already have their mobile ip merit badge. Worth the price of admission, I recommend this as a useful and practical study guide.

I own this book for almost 2 years I also own many more and by far this is the best IPv6 book. It covers all the topics of IPv6 and does it in a clear but not to simplistic way.
It serves both as a tutorial and a reference manual. One of the great things about it is that it covers IPv6 configuration on all major platforms like Windows LINUX and many others.

I considered many different books about IPv6. It looks like I made the right choice. This book teaches both about IPv6 itself and how to implement it with different operating systems (Windows XP, Vista, Linux, FreeBSD, etc) using Cisco routers or Juniper routers. I am currently running a dual-stack on my home network (both IPv4 and IPv6) and hope to be fully prepared should I need to migrate a large business network to IPv6 in the near future.

Face it folks, IPv6 is coming. Windows Vista comes with it enabled, as well as a few tunneling technologies (such as ISATAP) to help the transition from IPv4.

This is a very comprehensive reference for IPv6. The author covers IPv6 from the basics to advanced topics like multicasting, anycasting, and mobility. The book even covers the application aspects of IPv6 and porting issues, as Marc has that background as well. I would recommend this book to anyone seeking a up-to-the-minutes overview of IPv6, and as a reference for anyone that will be working with the protocol over the years ahead.

Really useful IPv6 books are few and far between because the technology is so new and evolving rapidly so its hard for a book to keep up. Marc's new book is the most up to date and informative book available now. I've got a copy on my bookshelf and am already handing it to clients for reference about our IPv6 integration projects.

Amazon's date is wrong on this book. It was just published in Jan 2006, not in 2002.

Sylvia Hagen's book IPv6 Essentials is also excellent - I'm waiting for the 2nd edition to bring it up to date.

I have half a dozen books on IPv6 on my shelf and by far Migrating to IPv6 provides the most comprehensive view of IPv6 and related protocols in both breath and depth. The book is written in clear and concise manner so it is a perfect learning tool. Moreover, it also makes for a good reference book because each chapter in the book is self-contained.

Our team works on IPv6 transition and we liked Migrating to IPv6 so much that we order a book for each team member. This is a must have book if you are working in Networking.

Wireless Intelligent Networking is an excellent publication with rare characteristics: easy to read, well organized and extremely efficient in what concerns quantity and quality of information. Technical protocols, market trends, services deployment, integration, among other IN hot issues are thoroughly dissected in WIN. This is definitely an essential tool for anyone in the Telco business, saving time and money in training for beginners and helping experts on a daily basis. A "dot.safe" investment for any company in the industry!

The telecommunications industry needs a lot of standards and
detailed information for true inter-operability. So, no book
is going to be perfect in its coverage of the material - there
is simply too much information.

Having said that, I find this book to be an excellent way to
understand the issues associated with WIN. It provides the basis
for further study and points people in the right direction for
increasing their knowledge.

I use this book as a basic reference and recommend it highly.
You will not go wrong reading this book - whether you are a
wireless telecom professional (which I am) or not.

The book succeeds in presenting an inherently complex and multi-disciplinary subject in a clear manner with sufficient references to allow further study as needed.

The book provides a broad view of wireless networking, including financial, market, and technical views. The technical information is well organized and presented from more than one perspective. Rather than presenting volumes of minute details, architectural principals are introduced and illuminated.

This is one of the outstanding technical books that I have ever read. I would highly recommend it to experienced hands in the fields of wireless or wireline voice networks.

I would also recommend it to beginners with the following cavaet: this book plumbs some fairly deep waters, and does not delve too deeply into the related fields that are the building blocks of Wireless Intellegent Networking. SS7, AIN, PSTN architecture, and mobility management are all presented, but having some previous background (or somebody handy who can fill in details) would be a big help.

Wireless Intelligent Networking is an excellent publication with rare characteristics: easy to read, well organized and extremely efficient in what concerns quantity and quality of information. Technical protocols, market trends, services deployment, integration, among other IN hot issues are thoroughly dissected in WIN. This is definitely an essential tool for anyone in the Telco business, saving time and money in training for beginners and helping experts on a daily basis. A "dot.safe" investment for any company in the industry!

This is a unique book that compares the intelligent networking standards, the ANSI-41 and GSM. It not only provides useful technical information but also covers the issues pertaining to the wireless intelligent market. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who is interested in WIN and CAMEL.

This little book is an excellent step by step treatment of SQL replication. Very readable. Very understandable.

This a great book that waste no time in getting to the point on showing you step by step how to set up your environment for merge replication with mobile devices on the enterprise. It covers the IIS server, The SQL Distributor and the SQL Publisher. Once again a great book and easy reference guide for merge replication.

The world's expert does it again. Rob is the world's leading expert in building very highly saleable SQL Server Compact applications and deployments. This book is full of all the tweaks and nuggets of information necessary to make a successful application and deployment.

There are pieces of information that you will never discover without this book. Rob has pulled it all together in one place and provides great step by step on the architecture, design, deployment and optimizations.

Two options, go to one of the conferences and see him present 15% of this, or buy the book for 30 bucks.

No fluff, just stuff you need to get the Server side of merge replication up and running for PDAs and other WinCE devices, with steps in the right order, screen shots and annotation on what the choices mean, which are the scalable routes to take, etc. This is an excellent companion to a theory book such as Pro SQL Server 2005 Replication (Definitive Guide)

I'm looking at doing a project involving a distributed ad-hoc sensor/actuator network. Reading data sheets from various vendors is fine, but I wanted an overall look at the theoretical landscape to get myself oriented. This book did a great job of presenting the state of the art - problems, solutions, research areas. It uses specific technology examples to motivate the discussion, but its focus on fundamentals should make it widely applicable and relevant for some years to come.

This book is a good entry point for someone wishing to learn about wireless computing and communication. It provides a broad survey of the various kinds of wireless applications and implementation design patterns, discussing the technology performance limitations and trade-offs that motivate each design decision. The viability and effectiveness of every design choice depends upon the other choices taken, motivating many complex mathematical optimization problems.

I began reading this book with the assumption that wireless application design rested on the same principles as the design of ordinary distributed computer systems, save for a narrower communication bandwidth, and occasional planned disconnections. This book made me realize that things are much more complicated in the wireless world. In ordinary distributed systems, the main challenge is the design of a static scheme for distributing work among communicating components. Once that is done, one can pretty much separate the infrastructure oriented code from the business logic. In the wireless world, the communication bandwidth's variability and lack of reliability requires the distribution of tasks to react to changing network conditions; this radically increases the difficulty of separating infrastructure concerns from business logic. The limitations of typical mobile devices (small memory, limited power, and slow processor speed) only add to the developer's burden. In designing an application for a pre-existing wireless system, traditional methods of program organization may not be appropriate. The need to discover or invent algorithms that take into account a mobile network's unique characteristics creates a challenge somewhat akin to that faced by the early users of novel massively-parallel computer architectures.

One learns that there are no general purpose easy answers to these problems, but the book does an excellent job in laying out the issues, concerns and approaches, while providing ample bibliographies of published research that readers can delve into for their specific problem. The reader comes away with a familiarity in the terms, concepts and acronyms used in the wireless community, providing an excellent foundation for further reading in the literature (which, unfortunately, is not always as well-written or accessible to the newcomer as is this text).

The importance of this book is due to the consumer demand for wireless devices. People are getting accustomed to the idea of carrying PDAs and having wireless connections at home, office, and even coffeehouses. But how can you secure the connection? How fast can you send data? How do you even know that there's something to connect to nearby?

I've just joined a project in my job that deals with wireless communication, and I had only superficial knowledge of the area. What I got out of this book was an awareness of all the issues and tradeoffs involved in the field. I also found the text to be filled with many explanations, so it was a surprisingly easy read for such a technical topic. It's very up to date as the last few chapters discuss WiMAX.

This book presents an excellent collection of papers describing various forms of mobility. It would be useful for a wide variety of technical professionals. This would also be an invaluable resource for students and researchers who plan to work in this increasingly important area. The unique feature of this book is the width of its coverage. It covers all the important papers I can think of.

1) The three areas covered - although they have similar problems with similar solutions - are rarely presented together. 2) The editors have selected a nice cross-section of papers from the three areas, and 3) The editors make some key points about and draw some key parallels between the three areas in the introductions and summaries.

This book is an excellent collection of research papers on mobility, and it serves as a good introduction on the topic as well as a reference for new work. It stands out for three reasons: (1) Its breadth - it covers all important aspects of mobility in a single volume. (2) Its depth - it pulls together papers from many different sources, including major conferences, but also hard-to-find, yet ground-breaking papers. (3) Its commentary - both by the authors and by the individual researchers (in the form of afterwords).

This book is an excellent and essential in-depth reference to both industry and academic audiences. It also was an ambitious undertaking. In 500 pages, the author has attempted to cover the history, current practice and the challenges of next generation mobile computing. Whether you are simply curious about smart phone application development, or are entering the profession yourself, "Smart Phone and Next Generation Mobile Computing" s a good place to start your journey down the road of mobile computing. Every section of this book is very clearly layed out and the index is very easy to use. Pei is well qualified to author this book. His academic and professional backgrounds have given him a solid foundation in the art and practice of mobile computing.

This book is the most comprehensive reference on smartphone/mobile computing on the market so far. It not only covers mobile computing fundamentals such as wireless networking support and hardware/software platforms, but also provides in-depth discussion on advanced topics like security, QoS, and challenges facing various mobile applications. Its level of detail not found in other books could benefit a large group of emerging mobile application developers like myself.
Highly recommended!

This is a very brief review, since I haven't finished reading the book, but I'm finding this to be exactly what I wanted: an intelligently written book that focuses on a very diverse set of uses of Smart Phones, and provides good technical deatil about their capabilities.

If you're looking for an in depth book on AAA and it's associated algorithms, there's no match for this book. Much as I wish I was wrong and that I could replace the book I borrowed from my friend with a cheaper book, I'm afraid I'm about to be forced to shell out the [...] on AAA. And I'm only going to need it as an intermittent reference. There's no math (at least no Greek), but many of the algorithms used to underpin the subject are explained concisely and clearly. It's simply well written and more informative than anything else on the market. I'm a sales engineer and this book was written on the ideal level for me. Technical enough but also abstract enough. Good work sir!

This 'Triple A' set stands for Authentication, Authorization, Accounting, and the theme of this book is maintaining security in a wireless cell-phone network.

Authentication is a three way street. Is the device being used really the correct device to receive the service being requested? And is the network being accessed really the network you want to be on? The third type of authentication is on a message level. Is the message itself legit, or did someone, somehow get in the middle and send a bogus message?

Authorization is rather like the old 'need to know' aspect of security. Is the salesman out in the field that's calling in really authorized to get employee or financial information?

Accounting includes making sure that the client is billed the correct amount of time, but also includes such things as system usage analysis to help define capacity planning.

Each of these subjects is exhaustively treated in this book. Further they are handled with a casual writing style that makes the book more enjoyable to read than most. Well, maybe enjoyable isn't exactly the right word -- how about making it possible to get through it without falling asleep.

If you need to know what wireless technology is about, but don't want to wade through mountains of technical detail, this book is for you. Ian does a great job of laying out what's most important about wireless, and gives a framework for figuring out how to use it successfully in your business. This book is an excellent resource for any business person or IT manager involved in or considering a wireless project. Congratulations Ian!

By cutting through the confusing acronyms and technocratic garble that earmark most wireless technology discussions, Ian Hayes delivers solid advice for creating and refining a corporate wireless strategy. Hayes provides readily actionable advice to managers, executives and IT personnel who need to quickly come up to speed on the ins and outs of wireless technology. Most impressive is his use of case studies and concrete examples to communicate how wireless technology can be deployed within corporate environments. Hayes offers cost justification guidelines that include how to communicate and sell a wireless solution to executives. This book is highly readable and offers practical advice on how to move forward with a corporate wireless computing strategy. If you are confused by the endless jargon that seems to accompany every wireless conversation and need to cut to the chase, this book is highly recommended reading for you and your management team.