A Framework for Mobile Applications Based on a Structured P2P Overlay

Abstract

P2P applications are increasingly popular. Unlike traditional client-server applications they do not require central server resources. This makes them less costly to host and maintain. While there have been a large number of P2P applications developed for PC based systems, there are only very few for mobile appliances, such as mobile phones or networked PDAs. Furthermore, there are even fewer applications which operate successfully on the public mobile data network (GPRS, 3G), rather than WiFi. This is largely due to the difficulties posed by the restrictive data access to mobile devices (NATs, Firewalls by the network operators) and traditionally high charges for data communications. Recently, the latter point has been virtually removed by the introduction of flat-rate data packages by the operators. This paper (and demo) present a framework and applications based on a structured P2P overlay network which can successfully operate on the public data network.