Electronic version of an article published as International Journal of Information Technology & Decision Making, vol. 11, no. 6, 2012, pp. 1035-1063 http://dx.doi.org/10.1142/S0219622012400147 © copyright World Scientific Publishing Company http://www.worldscinet.com/ijitdm International Journal of Information Technology & Decision Making  World Scientific Publishing Company 1 COMMUNICATION SUPPORT FOR MOBILE COLLABORATIVE WORK: AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY ROC MESSEGUER, ESUNLY MEDINA Department of Computer Architecture, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, D6 Building, Jordi Girona 1- 3,Barcelona, Spain {messeguer, esunlyma}@ac.upc.edu http://www.ac.upc.edu SERGIO F. OCHOA, JOSÉ A. PINO Department of Computer Science, Universidad de Chile, Av. Blanco Encalada 2120, 3er Piso, Santiago, RM, Chile {sochoa, jpino}@dcc.uchile.cl http://www.dcc.uchile.cl/ ANDRES NEYEM Department of Computer Science, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Av. V. Mackenna 4860, Macul, Santiago, RM, Chile aneyem@ing.puc.cl http://dcc.ing.puc.cl/ LEANDRO NAVARRO, DOLORS ROYO Department of Computer Architecture, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, D6 Building, Jordi Girona 1- 3,Barcelona, Spain {leandro, dolors}@ac.upc.edu http://www.ac.upc.edu Received (Day Month Year) Revised (Day Month Year) Communicated by (xxxxxxx) Advances in mobile computing and wireless communication are easing the evolution from traditional nomadic work to computer-mediated mobile collaborative work. Technology allows efficient and effective interaction among mobile users and it also provides access to shared resources available to them. However, the features and capabilities of the communication infrastructure supporting these activities influence the type of coordination and collaboration employed by mobile collaborative applications in real work scenarios. Developers of these applications are typically unaware of the constraints the communication infrastructure imposes on mobile collaborative systems, because they are not easy to foresee. That leads to a high probability of communication problems in otherwise fully functional mobile collaborative support applications. This paper presents an experimental study with real devices and networks on a realistic physical environment that shows how ad-hoc networks can effectively support mobile collaborative work and the practical limitations. The article analyzes several networking issues and it determines how they influence mobile