Spontaneous networking: An application-oriented approach to ad hoc networking

An ad hoc network must operate independent of a preestablished or centralized network management infrastructure, while still providing administrative services needed to support applications. Address allocation, name resolution, service location, authentication, and access control policies represent just some of the functionality that must be supported - without preconfiguration or centralized services. In order to solve these problems, it is necessary to leverage some aspect of the environment in which the network operates. We introduce the notion of a spontaneous network, created when a group of people come together for some collaborative activity. In this case, we can use the human interactions associated with the activity in order to establish a basic service and security infrastructure. We structure our discussion around a practical real-world scenario illustrating the use of such a network, identifying the key challenges involved and some of the techniques that can be used to address them.