A framework for seamless service interworking in ad-hoc networks

Local area wireless networks are becoming commonplace in our everyday lives. It would be beneficial to establish such wireless networks in an ad-hoc manner so that they are infrastructure-free. In the current IP networks, various infrastructure elements play cordial roles, and most of the service-related Internet technologies cannot be deployed in infrastructure-free ad-hoc networks. In this paper, we develop mechanisms for seamless service interworking in ad-hoc networks: first, finding devices, people and services in an ad-hoc environment, and then establishing communications sessions between two or more parties. To guarantee interworking with current networks, we reuse as much as possible well-known client-server Internet technologies and with minimal changes modify them to be applicable in a peer-to-peer manner in ad-hoc networks. We have developed methods for service discovery, session management, and security support that can be used in infrastructure-free ad-hoc networks. We have verified the developed methods with a proof-of-concept implementation in a WLAN testbed network. We also evaluated the realized implementation, in terms of bandwidth and CPU consumption. We present the evaluation results to conclude the paper. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.