  Despite providing similar functionality, multiple network services may
require the use of different interfaces to access the functionality, and this
problem will only get worse with the widespread deployment of ubiquitous
computing environments. One way around this problem is to use interface
adapters that adapt one interface into another. Chaining these adapters allows
flexible interface adaptation with fewer adapters, but the loss incurred due to
imperfect interface adaptation must be considered. This paper outlines a
mathematical basis for analyzing the chaining of lossy interface adapters. We
also show that the problem of finding an optimal interface adapter chain is
NP-complete.

Discrete Mathematics;Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing;Software Engineering