Smart download on the go: a wireless Internet application for music distribution over heterogeneous networks

The maturing distributed file sharing technology implemented by Napster has first enabled the dissemination of musical content in digital forms, permitting to costumers an ubiquitous reach to stored music files from around the world. In the post-Napster era, the Apple iTunes online music service has hit a record share of 16.7% in the MP3 player market. This is only the most prominent example of the success of digital music distribution based on packet network technologies. However, to the best of our knowledge, the most noteworthy aspect of the success of digital music distribution is that little about this music delivery technology is really new. To deeply change the trend of this technology business, we claim that wireless technologies must come on the scene. In particular, the digital music delivery model may take benefit by the integration of the wired Internet with a plethora of several, alternative wireless technologies, such as, for example, WiFi, WPAN and 3G. In this challenging context, we have developed a wireless Internet application designed to support the distribution of digital music to handheld devices. The main novelty of our software application amounts to its ability in providing a seamless music delivery service even in the presence of horizontal and vertical handoffs. We have taken measurements from real-world experiments that show the efficacy of the system we have developed.

I. Introduction

Napster has been probably the most revolutionary and unprecedented in scale phenomenon of digital music distribution over packet switched networks. In the post-Napster era, several major record labels and Internet providers launched their latest creations for delivering MP3-based music contents. Following this trend, many important networked systems have blossomed that were developed for delivering modern multimedia entertainment services (music, video and games) to wired devices on a large scale. Perhaps the latest and most famous example of widespread access to a music storehouse amounts to the Apple iTunes Music Store. With such a kind of system, each browser-equipped music consumer can search new songs or legendary hits he have not heard in years. Previews for any desired song may be played out for free and then downloaded in pristine digital quality at a low cost, with just one click [2].