Extending Mesh Networks to Opportunistic Resource Sharing

We propose a high-level framework that extends the notion of opportunistic mesh networking to include opportunistic access to and sharing of other device resources such as nonvolatile data storage and computation. While work has been done on providing opportunistic access to each of these resources (network access, data storage, and computation, that is) individually, this paper is an attempt to bring all three resource-sharing applications under the same umbrella. This framework uses an existing "web of trust" protocol that does not require a full public-key infrastructure (PKI) and adds reputation mechanisms to handle interactions between both explicitly-trusted and untrusted peers. Once devices have initiated a connection, they mutually authenticate one another and negotiate the terms of a resource-sharing agreement overran encrypted tunnel. This agreement may involve a payment of electronic currency or a request for credit in exchange for a particular resource, or the resource may be provided at no cost. Each device\´s local policy dictates how interactions with others should proceed.