Packet-based context aware system to determine information system user's context

Context awareness has been a vital field of ubiquitous computing research. Numerous methods for capturing, interring external context and providing necessary service have been developed and relevant projects have been performed. However, user's internal context is more valuable than the external one. Thus, more searches on internal context are needed. This paper confines its research domain to the internet based information system (IS) in order to infer the internal context of user. For inferring internal context in this IS domain, one of the computer network techniques, packet sniffing technique, is utilized. This is effective and efficient in acquiring the information of the user's demand. Also, inference algorithm which is integrated with the acquired user's information is proposed. Furthermore, this paper demonstrates that the prototype system adopts the suggested technique and algorithm in order to prove its validity. The proposed prototype system is the basis of providing IS user with ubiquitous services and enhances the convenience and efficiency during business hour of IS user. In this fashion, this paper presents a new pattern of context acquisition and inference in implementing the ubiquitous computing based-IS along with the direction of internal context awareness research. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.