BBS-ONE: Bulletin board and forum system for mobile opportunistic networks

Electronic bulletin boards and forum systems are commonly used to exchange opinions, news, event notifications, documents and other media on the Internet. However, such systems usually require a central server hosting the content. Such servers cannot be installed in ad-hoc opportunistic wireless networks, which are created when mobile devices congregate to form a localized and short-lived network without Internet connectivity. We present BBS-ONE, a bulletin board system for opportunistic networks, and describe its service model and implementation. BBS-ONE works in highly mobile opportunistic networks, considers the mobility of nodes, and allows nodes to operate even when churn is high when nodes join and leave the network. It transparently disseminates public data and posts and persists desired data by operating in a peer-to-peer fashion and using a store-carry-forward model of communication. It maintains the data consistency needed for a BBS and forum system. We have implemented the application on generic desktop OS platforms (Windows, Linux, Mac) as well as a mobile platform (iPhone/iPod).