Peer-to-peer networks for virtual home environments

This paper presents an approach to extend OSGi server based home networks with JXTA´s peer-to-peer (P2P) technology to a multi-server home environment connecting multiple private home networks to one true virtual environment for communication, media, sharing/exchange, and distributed device control. We elaborate on the basic integration methodology and extend it to a general, security preserving, architectural concept based on a two level integration concept for inhome and interhome networks. The integration is achieved through additional OSGi services for the management of virtual devices, peer-to-peer communication, and authentication. The example of a quality of service based video streaming management demonstrates one of the potential advanced application for which peer-to-peer can be used in addition.