10372 Abstracts Collection and Report – User-Centric Networking

Abstract

In the latest years the highly nomadic lifestyles that Internet users experience, and the strong entanglement between society and technology, lead to the appearance of community networks where the end-user has, most of the times, an active role in terms of sharing Internet access. Such networks range from basic functionality, such as the ability to create a wireless (ad-hoc) network on-the-fly with a simple PC (e.g., Internet Connection Sharing functionality from Microsoft), or more elaborate cases of commercial success, e.g. FON. Wireless networks provided by end-users are expected to grow, despite the limitations imposed by traditional operator-centric Internet communication models. In this new scenario 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 incentive scheme. Besides Internet access sharing, being a micro-operator also means providing other network functionality, such as local mobility management and store-cache-forward mechanisms, based on the right set of incentives as well as on adequate information concerning the way people interact and move.