JXTA: A technology facilitating mobile peer-to-peer networks

JXTA is a peer-to-peer technology that enables developers to easily create distributed computing software. This paper describes JXTA (short for "juxtapose") in general and focuses on its applicability for mobile-networked systems. Since mobile devices like PDAs, mobile phones, or laptop computers are much more likely to interoperate with each other in the absence of a coordinating authority such as' a server, there is an obvious need for a technology above the hardware abstraction level of IrDA and Bluetooth. JXTA enables mobile devices running on various platforms not only to share data with each other, but also to use functions of their respective peers. In this paper a general overview of the JXTA specification, the corresponding protocols, and mobile peer-to-peer aspects is presented. Furthermore, the current status of an open source JXTA implementation for Java is briefly outlined. This paper analyzes to which extend mobile devices are suitable for a peer-to-peer approach and how this approach, can be realized with JXTA. To emphasize the practical impacts of a peer-to-peer approach some applications are described, which are based on the authors' current projects. This includes a hospital scenario, as well as an example for a distributed electronic patient health record. These examples are helpful, because they include security, data protection, wireless and mobile technology, and reliability.