A framework for seamless service interworking in ad-hoc networks

Local area wireless networks are becoming commonplace in our everyday lives. It would be beneficial to establish such wireless networks in an ad-hoc manner so that they are infrastructure-free. In the current IP networks, various infrastructure elements play cordial roles, and most of the service-related Internet technologies cannot be deployed in infrastructure-free ad-hoc networks. In this paper, we develop mechanisms for seamless service interworking in ad-hoc networks: first, finding devices, people and services in an ad-hoc environment, and then establishing communications sessions between two or more parties. To guarantee interworking with current networks, we reuse as much as possible well-known client–server Internet technologies and with minimal changes modify them to be applicable in a peer-to-peer manner in ad-hoc networks. We have developed methods for service discovery, session management, and security support that can be used in infrastructure-free ad-hoc networks. We have verified the developed methods with a proof-of-concept implementation in a WLAN testbed network. We also evaluated the realized implementation, in terms of bandwidth and CPU consumption. We present the evaluation results to conclude the paper.