An improved mechanism for controlling portable computers in limited coverage areas

Abstract

A network formed by desktop and portable computers is a useful environment for doing parallel computing. In this infrastructure we implement Master/Slave parallel distributed programs which exhibit strict data dependencies among iterations and parallel calculations inside an iteration. In a previous work, we developed a load balancing strategy that uses performance information of slave computers supplied by a framework based on Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP). This strategy considers the received beacon strength in the portable computers for executing this kind of applications efficiently. However, when a portable computer is located in a limited coverage area, our framework considers' that this resource is unavailable, and therefore it can't be used for parallel computing. In this paper we present a mechanism based on the extension of our SNMP framework that allows us to use the computers while there is a wireless network connection.