AFT: Adaptive and fault tolerant peer-to-peer overlay-A user-centric solution for data sharing

The widespread of interconnectable computers gives systems the chance to operate more efficiently, by better utilizing the cooperation between individual components. User-centric solutions address the devices themselves and, since there is no network infrastructure and a device powerful enough to assume the role of a coordinator, adopting a peer-to-peer model tends to be the best solution. In this paper we propose AFT, an overlay that adapts to a changing number of nodes, is resilient to faults and is the foundation for an efficient implementation of a reputation based trust system. The AFT overlay is designed to be a solution for systems that need to share transient information, performing a synchronization between various components, like in mobile ad-hoc networks, M2M networks, urban networks, and wireless sensor networks. The operations supported by the overlay, like joining, leaving, unicast transmission, broadcast sharing and maintenance can be accomplished in a duration belonging to O(root N), where N is the number of nodes which are part of the structure. We proved these properties and we evaluate the time performance related to overlay creation and node joining. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.