We identify a new capability for mobile computing that mimics the opening and closing of a laptop, but avoids physical transport of hardware. Through rapid and easy personalization and depersonalization of anonymous hardware, a user is able to suspend work at one machine and to resume it at another. Our key insight is that this capability can be achieved by layering virtual machine technology on a distributed file system. We report on an initial implementation and describe our plans for improving efficiency, portability, and security.

We report on a new capability for mobile computing called Internet Suspend/Resume. This mechanism mimics the opening and closing of a laptop, but avoids physical transport of hardware. We show that this capability can be implemented by layering virtual machine technology on a distributed file system. We also show how the key obstacle of large VM state size can be overcome by exploiting proactivity and by using incremental state transfer to the resume site. Our experiments confirm that these techniques are successful in reducing resume latency to just a few seconds for a typical present-day machine configuration. The paper describes a number of state transfer policies and quantifies their relative merits using an industry-standard benchmark.