Mobility places many demands on a system. Size and weight constraints limit the computing resources on a mobile client. Network connectivity is highly variable, and sometimes non-existent.
Battery life is a nagging concern.
In spite of these challenges, mobile users need to access and update information at any time and from any place. Coda and Odyssey are experimental systems built by the research group of Professor M. Satyanarayanan in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University to explore these issues. Both systems embody adaptation at many levels. Coda implements application-transparent adaptation in the context of a distributed file system. Since the Posix interface is preserved, legacy applications can run unmodified on Coda.