An Anycast Communication Model for Data Offloading in Intermittently-Connected Hybrid Networks☆

For billions of people, mobile phones have become essential communication means to produce and share multimedia contents. Most current sharing solutions rely on centralized online solutions, requiring a permanent Internet connectivity, with the consequence of increasing –and sometimes of overloading– the networks of mobile operators. This paper presents an anycast communication model allowing to offload data in wide intermittently-connected hybrid networks, using a peer-to-peer approach. Such networks combine an infrastructure part that relies on fixed equipments with intermittently or partially connected parts formed by mobile devices. This model has been implemented in a middleware platform called Nephila. Simulation results confirm that, with Nephila, thousands of people roaming a medium-size city center can share multimedia contents , using a combination of stable and transient transmission links.