The Rover toolkit [1] combines relocatable dynamic objects and queued remote procedure calls to provide unique services for "roving" mobile applications.

A relocatable dynamic object (RDO) is an object with a well-defined interface that can be dynamically loaded into a client computer from a server computer (or vice versa) to reduce client-server communication requirements. RDOs are written in Tcl using a custom object-oriented framework.

Queued remote procedure call is a communication system that permits applications to continue to make non-blocking remote procedure call requests even when a host is disconnected, with requests and responses being exchanged upon network reconnection.

The challenges of mobile environments include intermittent connectivity, limited bandwidth, and channel-use optimization. Experimental results from a Rover-based mail reader, calendar program, and two non-blocking versions of World-Wide Web browsers show that Rover's services are a good match to these challenges. The Rover toolkit also offers advantages for workstation applications by providing a uniform distributed object architecture for code shipping, object caching, and asynchronous object invocation.

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See: Disruption Tolerant Networking

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