Segmented file sharing with recursive epidemic placement policy for reliability in mobile peer-to-peer devices

Peer-to-peer applications have become highly popular in today´s pervasive environments due to the spread of different file sharing platforms. In such a multiclient environment, if users have mobility characteristics, asymmetry in communication causes a degradation of reliability. This work proposes an approach based on the advantages of epidemic selective resource placement through mobile Infostations. Epidemic placement policy combines the strengths of both proactive multicast group establishment and hybrid Infostation concept. With epidemic selective placement we face the flooding problem locally (in geographic region/landscape) and enable end to end reliability by forwarding requested packets to epidemically ´selected´ mobile users in the network on a recursive basis. The selection of users is performed based on their remaining capacity, weakness of their signal and other explained mobility limitations. Examination through simulation is performed for the response and reliability offered by epidemic placement policy which reveals the robustness and reliability in file sharing among mobile peers.