RINGS: Lookup service for peer-to-peer systems in mobile ad hoc networks

A Peer-to-Peer (P2P) system consists of a set of nodes in which every node shares its own resources and services among other nodes in the system. These peer-to-peer systems axe basically overlay networks, work on top of fixed network infrastructure. With the increasing popularity of mobile ad-hoc networks, it becomes necessary to think of P2P systems that can efficiently work in mobile environments. Putting current P2P applications into mobile environments, results in multiple layer flooding because these applications will maintain different peer routes than that of by network layer. Also, routes at the application layer may not be necessarily optimal at the network layer. Here, we address this problem and propose a novel, controlled-flooding based protocol named RINGS which works at network layer and helps P2P systems to work in mobile environment efficiently. RINGS reduces query lookup cost by evenly distributing data indices throughout the network, thus reducing network layer routing overhead.