User-provided networking: challenges and opportunities

Abstract

PANEL SUMMARY or OVERVIEW The U-NET’09 workshop is dedicated to the debate of concepts, challenges, and opportunities concerning userprovided networking, i.e., scenarios where users cooperate by sharing wireless resources as well as Internet services. To provide a specific example that relates to Internet access (connectivity), the end-user (or a community of end-users) is a micro-operator in the sense that he/she shares his/her subscribed broadband Internet access based on some form of incentive scheme. In addition, the end-user may or may not provide other network functionality such as local mobility management, or persistent storage and forwarding services. This new role is disruptive in what concerns Internet service models, since there is no distinction between what is today known as end-user device and network device: in the future, end-user devices will actively participate as part of the network. In contrast, the Internet has been up to now mostly the means for end-users to obtain some form of network service, originally related to connectivity, person-to-person communication, or information retrieval. Such user-centric provider role is also disruptive given that the regular network boundaries of trust have to be extended in a way that should mimic social behavior: there is the need to form networks of trust in order to accommodate a robust network growth, given that the key to such growth is the willingness to cooperate.