Peer-to-peer file sharing over wireless mesh networks

Wireless mesh networks are being widely deployed around the world as a mean to provide low-cost access to the Internet. An orthogonal evolution in computer networking has been the rise of peer-to-peer communication. Structured peer-to-peer overlay networks have been used as platform for building large-scale distributed network applications such as file sharing. It is of interest to build those distributed application over wireless mesh networks. Unfortunately, conventional structured P2P overlays are not suitable for direct deployment in a mobile and wireless environment. We argue for a dual-layer mesh network architecture with support from wireless mesh routers for peer-to-peer applications. We demonstrate using extensive simulations that this approach has excellent potential to improve the performance of peer-to-peer applications in a wireless setting; specifically we focus on file sharing but other applications can also be supported by this approach.