Can Residential Wireless Lans Play

We present a P2P scheme that could fuel the deployment of free public wireless LANs (WLANs) in cities; these WLANs would complement existing and future cellular networks. We call our scheme the P2P Wireless Network Confederation (P2PWNC). Unlike existing approaches, P2PWNC does not rely on central planning or altruistic groups. In P2PWNC, wireless service is provided to those who provide service to others based on an algorithm that detects non simultaneous exchanges, which runs in isolation on every peer. This indirect reciprocity algorithm resists the Sybil attack and promotes cooperation without relying on trusted authorities, persistent identities, or tamperproof modules. In this paper, we present P2PWNC as another component of the emerging 4G landscape.