The Monarch Project in the
Department of Computer Science at
Rice University
addresses the area of networking support for wireless
and mobile hosts.
We are developing networking protocols and protocol interfaces to
allow truly seamless wireless and mobile host networking.
The scope of our research includes protocol design,
implementation, performance evaluation, and usage-based validation,
spanning areas ranging roughly from portions of the
ISO Data Link layer (layer 2) through the Presentation layer (layer 6).
The goal of this work is to enable mobile
hosts to communicate with each other and with stationary or wired hosts,
transparently and adaptively
making the most efficient use of the best network
connectivity available to the mobile host at any time.
The name "Monarch" derives from the migratory behavior of the
monarch butterfly.
Each autumn,
millions of monarch butterflies migrate from central and
eastern United States and Canada to overwintering roosts
in central Mexico;
with the coming of spring, the monarch population again
migrates northward.
During migration, they may cover 80 miles or more per day.
The name "Monarch" can also be considered as an acronym
for "MObile Networking ARCHitectures".