Spontaneous networking: An application-oriented approach to ad hoc networking

An ad hoc network must operate independent of a preestablished or centraliz ed network management infrastructure, while still providing administrative services needed to support applications. Address allocation, name resolutio n, service location, authentication, and access control policies represent just some of the functionality that must be supported - without preconfigur ation or centralized services. In order to solve these problems, it is nece ssary to leverage some aspect of the environment in which the network opera tes. We introduce the notion of a spontaneous network, created when a group of people come together for some collaborative activity. In this case, we can use the human interactions associated with the activity in order to est ablish a basic service and security infrastructure. We structure our discus sion around a practical real-world scenario illustrating the use of such a network, identifying the key challenges involved and some of the techniques that can be used to address them.