Peer to Peer Networks with Mobile Applications

Instructor: Prof. Mario Gerla

Affiliation: Computer Science Department, University of California, Los Angeles

Duration: 22 hours

Period: June 19 - June 23, 2006

Place: Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell'Informazione: Elettronica, Informatica, Telecomunicazioni, via G. Caruso, meeting room, ground floor

Credits: 5

Contacts: Prof. Stefano Giordano

This activity is part of the Pisa International School on the Next Generation Internet.


Aims:

Peer-to-peer (P2P) systems have met enormous success in the Internet because of the many advantages they offer with respect to traditional client/server systems, namely: scalability, dependability and robustness. These advantages are achieved by a decentralized organization. Moreover, P2P systems in the Internet often use application level overlays to provide services not available from the Internet (eg, content based addressing, multicast, virtual coordinate routing etc). These Internet overlays rely on a very efficient IP routing layer.

Peer to Peer systems are now emerging also in wireless, mobile ad hoc networks. Examples of mobile P2P applications are: content distribution, file sharing, auctioning and distributed network games in vehicular networks; urban environment sensing (for navigation safety and civilian protection) based on vehicular platforms; content sharing and collaborative group-work in people networks, etc.

Due to mobility and to the unique wireless medium characteristics, P2P systems for mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) require a fundamentally new approach with respect to that used in the wired Internet. For example, well known proactive and on-demand MANET routing schemes are not well suited for P2P interchanges. New application level routing such as “gossiping” and “epidemic dissemination” must be developed for effective P2P data sharing in MANETs.

This seminar course will consist of two main components:

  1. Review of conventional P2P Internet implementations/tools/functions
    1. Gnutella, BitTorrent, Chord, CAN, Pastry, etc
  2. Review of emerging mobile P2P environments/applications/tools
    1. Car to Car systems; CarTorrent; AdTorrent; mobile Bazaar, etc
    2. Mobile, urban sensor networks