n of the asset so that the loca- tion can be keyed into the inventory management OSS application. Of course, it would be preferable if the labour involved could be reduced or eliminated. In this section, we discuss one proposal for automating asset location. This sec- tion is based on the paper "JLocator - Web-based asset location system" by Luca Deri of the University of Pisa, Italy. We give some background on the need for auto- mated asset location and a brief introduction to the approach taken by JLocator. While introducing a cutting edge proposal, the reader will also see many of the issues that are involved in asset location. Unfortunately, discovering asset location or "localising assets" has not been systematically carried out in the past. 38 Physically locating assets is made complex by network growth and mobile com- puting. Existing network management tools are usually not suitable for managing dynamically moving assets and provide few facilities for asset localisation. In addi- tion, asset management products delegate to human operators the task of locating physical assets. JLocator is a Java-based system that allows assets to be dynamically localised. Users can locate assets through a web interface, and external applications such as asset management systems can take advantage of asset location information provided by JLocator. JLocator's distributed architecture makes it scalable and platform-independent. Mobile computing, teleworking and shorter computer lifespan have complicated system administration and service provisioning. In particular, IPv4 provides little support for mobility forcing a mobile computer to change its IP address as it changes location. The result is that management applications are usually unable physically 37 Clarity is now a subsidiary of Powerlan Ltd. 38 We shall use the term "localise" as meaning "determine the location of". OSS for Telecom Networks to locate a network resource and cannot access services provided by mobile com- puters when their IP addresses change. Asset mana