0018-9162/02/$17.00 © 2002 IEEE34 Computer
Jini Home Networking: A Step
toward Pervasive Computing
I
nternetworking services have come a long
way since their inception in basic communi-
cation between two homogeneous comput-
ers located not far from each other. Today,
intelligent devices can interact with each
other anytime and anywhere in the world. Recent
advances in technology—especially in wireless
communication—have fueled the market for such
devices. At the same time, decreasing processor
costs and size let engineers endow ever more
devices with application-specific processing power.
These trends are moving toward the vision of per-
vasive computing.
Home networks represent a step along this path.
As the name suggests, a home network intercon-
nects various electronic devices within a house. In
cases where the home network connects to a broad-
band local loop, it can also make these devices
accessible over the Internet, opening the door to
new applications that rely on remote network
administration.
The requirements that drive a home network dif-
fer from those for an enterprise network. For one
thing, a home network must handle interference
from household appliances such as microwave ovens
and cordless phones. Second, given the lack of sys-
tem administrators in the home, the network must
operate with little or no user intervention. At the
same time, it must meet the challenge of structure
and usage variances among in-home devices.
Current devices vary greatly from each other and
from one household to another with respect to mod-
els, make, and quantity. Their purposes range from
washing clothes to controlling room humidity.
A home network allows all such appliances to
communicate with one another. Thus, it needs a
technology that can seamlessly integrate assorted
devices into a monolithic communication network.
JINI OVERVIEW
Jini network technology is middleware that pro-
vides a set of application programming interfaces
(APIs) as well as network protocols that can meet
home network requirements. It establishes a soft-
ware platform enabling all devices that form the
network to talk to each other, irrespective of their
operating systems or interface constraints. In a Jini
environment, each device provides a service to other
devices in the network. Each device publishes its
own interfaces, which other devices can use to com-
municate with it and thereby access its particular
service. This approach ensures compatibility and
standardized access among all devices.
A Jini environment is not housed on a single com-
puter nor is it a network of computers. Jini tech-
nology provides a distributed environment for
devices to communicate with each other. Each device
provides a set of services to the network, creating a
federation of services for the constituent devices. No
central authority controls federation services.
As Figure 1 shows, a Jini environment imple-
ments the connection technology below the net-
work application layer, building on top of the Java
platform. The technology accepts all sorts of
Rahul Gupta
Sumeet
Talwar
Dharma P.
Agrawal
University of
Cincinnati
Jini connection technology forms
a network of devices on the fly,
without manual connection
or configuration. It can also
complement other technologies
that strive for “anytime,
anywhere” connectivity.
C O M P U T I N G P R A C T I C E S