In preparation of a mass mobile device roll out, a worldwide manufacturer of flexible packaging came to Miles Data looking for an effective, and reliable way of connecting to their existing legacy AS400 (5250) application over their wireless network. The existing 5250 application requires constant connectivity of logged in users. Any disconnection will require the application administrator to physically reset the user before they can gain access to the application. Constant connectivity between the user’s session and the host application is an absolute requirement.

Challenge

Develop a solution that will allow a user’s session to remain connected to the host application even when the mobile devices themselves become disconnected from the wireless network. Wireless disconnects are not uncommon in any environment and can happen for a variety of reasons including:

• Holes in coverage
• IP address conflicts
• Roaming issues
• Devices going to sleep

In addition to ensuring a constant connection to the host application, the administrators of the system wanted to centrally manage all sessions – a task that is not possible on standard client side terminal emulation applications.

Solution

The solution was to integrate Stay Linked, a piece of software that resides on a hard wired server between the mobile device (handheld computers) and the host application (5250 emulation). When the mobile devices gets disconnected from the network the connection between the Stay Linked server and the host application remains. As soon as the mobile device connects back to the wireless network the user’s session is restored exactly where it left off without the host application even realizing a user had been disconnected.

Results

The end results is a managed wireless connection to the host application without the risk of disconnect. In addition to maintaining the connection to the host application, the solution provided for an administrator to be able to accurately maintain and monitor individual user sessions which provides for remote management and troubleshooting of end user processes.