Mobile File-Sharing over P2P Networks

Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing is a networking and distributed computing paradigm which allows the sharing of computing resources and services by direct, symmetric interaction between computers. With the advance in mobile wireless communication technology and the increasing number of mobile users, peer-to-peer computing, in both academic research and industrial development, has recently begun to extend its scope to address problems relevant to mobile devices and wireless networks. The mobile ad hoc network (MANET) and P2P systems share key characteristics including self-organization and decentralization, and both need to solve the same fundamental problem: connectivity. Although it seems natural and attractive to deploy P2P systems over MANET due to this common nature, the special characteristics of mobile environments and the diversity in wireless networks bring new challenges for research in P2P computing. Currently, most P2P systems work on wired Internet, which depends on application layer connections among peers, forming an application layer overlay network. In MANET, overlay is also formed dynamically via connections among peers, but without requiring any wired infrastructure. So the major differences between P2P and MANET that concern us in this article are: