Mobility tickets allows users access to resources they are authorised to use. A context reporter learns about resources available in a new environment and provides information on them to the mobile computer' s operating system and applications. A network scheduler manages network access after considering factors such as price and availability. Recent work has concentrated on allowing ad-hoc access to services away from a mobile host's 'home'. As well as wireless connections, other services such as News, Web access or printing could be made available.
Current systems rely on a home location which authenticates users to foreign domains.
This is less than ideal in an environment containing many separate domains, services and users, and may be unacceptable in its privacy implications. Instead, a ticketing scheme is proposed which allows users to be authenticated but not identified as they access services. Users obtain tickets from ticket servers, then 'spend' them acquiring services. Further work will examine the questions raised by this approach. There are also implications for the providers.