Efficiently Accessing Devices Across Local Area Networks

Given continued component miniaturization it is likely that in the future the immediate environment will be littered with a plethora of computer enabled devices that all are interconnected via a wide range of networked mediums. This then raises the question of how to allow applications to make best use of the richness and variety of this environment. Whilst a considerable amount of work continues to be undertaken into networking this is generally focused on large scale systems. Consequently, whilst it is now possible to use the Internet to access a file at the other side of the world it is still difficult to access a physical device that is connected to another machine on the same network.