Duration: 50:49

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In infrastructure-less networks, basic services such as naming have to be provided by the network itself. An example of these networks are mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). As already noted by others, MANETs and peer-to-peer (P2P) networks both share the common necessity of self-organization and decentralization. Especially structured peer-to-peer protocols such as Pastry or Chord offer a convenient way to implement basic MANET services. Yet, structured P2P protocols have originally been proposed for the Internet, imposing a different set of constraints on protocol design than MANETs do. In this talk, I highlight the key issues arising in the design of structured P2P overlays for MANETs. Contrary to the common opinion that mismatching virtual and physical topologies are the main problem, I show that consistency maintenance is of greater importance. I present a general principle for consistency maintenance which operates at the network layer, does not require an underlying routing protocol, and does not employ flooding-based route discovery. The principle also enjoys provable correctness. Based upon this, I present the design of a robust consistency maintenance protocol, and discuss its use as a scalable, structured P2P protocol for MANETs. A simulation-based evaluation study supports the claims that the protocol solves the addressed issues and that it exhibits excellent performance.