An Anycast Communication Model for Data Offloading in Intermittently-Connected Hybrid Networks

For billions of people, mobile phones have become essential communication means to produce and share multimedia contents. Most current sharing solutions rely on centralized online solutions, requiring a permanent Internet connectivity, with the conse- quence of increasing –and sometimes of overloading– the networks of mobile operators.This paper presents an anycast communication model allowing to offload data in wide intermittently-connected hybrid networks, using a peer-to-peer approach. Such networks combine an infrastructure part that relies on fixed equipments with intermittently or partially connected parts formed by mobile devices. This model has been implemented in a middleware platform called Nephila. Simulation results confirm that, with Nephila, thousands of people roaming a medium-size city center can share multimedia con- tents, using a combination of stable and transient transmission links.