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Most of future digital services for home and office users will be deployed and delivered through the Internet and wireless connectivity. However, employing regular access points (APs) and protocols will not allow an efficient coexistence among heterogeneous application flows. Indeed, real-time and elastic applications are (and will be) supported by different protocols and featured with different performance requirements: low perpacket delay for the former and high throughput for the latter. In this work, we present a work-in-progress evaluation of a new AP prototype able to guarantee a fast and smooth data delivery for real-time streams while maintaining a high throughput for TCP-based applications. Our approach is based on a userspace modification of the AP's code based on OpenWRT operating system so as to appropriately shape transiting network traffic. Preliminary experimental results confirm that our solution represents an optimal candidate to become the center of future wireless in-home scenarios.

From the advent of the digital era, new powerful technologies have shown, on one hand, important progresses towards the mankind necessity and, on the other hand, a progressive isolation of individuals. In this work, we present a social application we have developed to support people with disabilities. Our application leverages on the popularity of smart phones and on the Web 2.0 paradigm to pervasively and invisibly collect information about the accessibility or city roads. This information is then used to provide a Google Maps-like service to determine an accessible path between any two locations for users with a certain disability (e.g., people on a wheelchair).