I'm trying to design the network component of a system that encompasses a server, a LAN printer and various mobile devices on a LAN.
It will be a client-server model where the devices are on a LAN but constantly send their data to a server. I'm trying to figure out a back-up plan in the instance that the internet connection goes down. I was thinking that I would denote one mobile device as a 'captain' and have all the data sent to it (in the event that the internet goes down), then once the connection to the internet is re-established, push the data from the captain device to the server.
Is there a precedent / name for this pattern? Are there any better approaches?
Depending on the content/importance of your data and how much you trust the client devices a better approach (I think) would be to store the data on the mobile device until the device can verify that it exists in it's entirety on the server regardless of internet connectivity. That way you're not putting all your eggs in the 'captain' basket. I've seen this done before and it worked fairly well although I couldn't give you the name of a pattern for it.