Peer-to-peer network and user information discovery and sharing for mobile users and devices

Mobile users and their devices need to discover a growing range of information. Users may want to know, for example, the existence and locations of surrounding networks, and local services and application contents available on these networks. Emerging mobile devices, especially networking devices on moving vehicles, may need to know information about neighboring networks so that they can, for example, acquire a local IP address from, and authenticate with, a neighboring network before an actual handoff starts or even before the mobile devices detect the radio signal from the neighboring network. Such pre-handoff processing allows fast-moving vehicles to roam seamlessly across homogeneous and heterogeneous radio systems. This paper proposes a new mobile peer-to-peer information sharing (MP2P-IS) method. With MP2P-IS, mobile users and devices collect information about each network they visit during their routine use of the network. Rather than forgetting the information after leaving the network, a mobile device carries the information with it as it moves into other networks. MP2P-IS takes advantage of users' natural mobility to bring the information collected by each user device to locations where it can be useful to, and easily accessible by, other users and devices. Mobile users and devices then share directly with each other the information they need.