Building a Social MANET Based on an SNS Community Token
Koichi Hirai, Kazumasa Takami · 2017
The recent spread of mobile networks has paved the way for building a pervasive social networking (PSN) environment, which enables people to access social networking services (SNS) anytime and from anywhere. There have been extensive studies on MANET (Mobile Ad-hoc NETworks), which use mobile terminals for relaying information. While the feasibility of using them as emergency networks in the aftermath of a disaster has been verified, no service targeted at ordinary users is provided. Since mobile terminals of strangers are used to relay information in MANET, it is necessary to develop technologies that remove users' concerns about sniffing and data falsification and cultivate users' willingness to offer their mobile terminals for building a network. This paper proposes a method of using a MANET to connect the terminal of an overseas visitor, who does not subscribe to any local carrier's service, to a free public Wi-Fi access point. This method builds a social MANET based on a community token shared by the users via an SNS. Since this network is made up of mobile terminals of only the members of the same SNS group, high reliability can be expected.