Information Search On IMANET

As for information access, the information from the Internet may be cached in some of the MTs within the IMANET. Moreover, any MT can be an information source. Without knowing the whereabout of information, a search algorithm is needed for IMANET as is done in the Internet. Since the concept of an aggregate cache is supported in the IMANET, data items can be received from local caches of the MTs as well as via an access points (AP) connected to the Internet. When an MT needs a data item, it does not know exactly where to retrieve the data item from, so it broadcasts a request to all of the adjacent MTs. If an MT receives the request and has the data item in its local cache, it will send a reply to the requester to acknowledge that it has the data item; otherwise, it will forward the request to its neighbors.

Based on the idea described above, we propose an information search algorithm, called Simple Search (SS), to determine an information access path to the MTs with cached data of the request or to appropriate APs. The decision is based on the arriving order of acknowledgments from the MTs or APs. Once the MT receives the requested data item, it triggers the cache admission control procedure to determine whether it should cache the data item.