A negotiation framework for content distribution in mobile transient networks

Transient networks are spontaneous networks that appear for a short period of time in order to provide basic services such as connectivity and content distribution among a small community. Nowadays mobile devices are becoming multimode by nature providing multiple connection paths. This paper investigates the efficiency and benefit of a mobile transient network where multiple nodes collaborate, offering a multihomed network with community services by means of intelligent agents. The paper concretely proposes an architecture able to fully support a peer-to-peer transient community during both negotiation and service steps for two different modes: file download and multimedia streaming. The first mode, implemented on intelligent and cooperative agents, provides two negotiation models (fair and dynamic) in order to guarantee wider flexibility for different possible scenarios and community models; the second one implements a content delivery system into transient community, taking advantage of multihomed features of mobile devices.