What is User-Centric Networking?
The recent success of online social networks hints at the general interest in socio-aware applications. In the User-Centric Networking (UCN) paradigm we leverage the widely accepted fact that nowadays each user of the network possesses multiple mobile and/or stationary devices. At the same time, mobile consumer devices are becoming both more powerful and more widespread.
As an implication of these trends, socio-aware networking can be realized directly between the users’ devices, i.e. in a peer-to-peer manner without depending on servers in the Internet. We assume that each user of our network possesses multiple devices which have services running that he wants to share with users that are familiar to him. Furthermore, all trusted devices are regarded as a resource pool which can be leveraged for data storage or other internal uses, regardless if they provide the service themselves.
Picturing such a service network which is strictly user-provided and bound to social contexts leads to the UCN scenario.
Advantages of User-Centric Networking
Communication in todays computer networks is currently heavily influenced by a demand for networking services among people sharing a certain social context (e.g. friends or co-workers). Currently such communication services are provided by companies like Facebook or Dropbox using a client/server architecture.
This classic paradigm has three drawbacks for the user. First, Internet access is always required, even if both communication partners are in the same local network or in geographical vicinity to each other. This might impose unnecessary obstacles for an easy to use direct communication, for example when traveling by train or airplane. Second, mobile data traffic is expensive and a growing challenge for providers which pass increasing costs down to their customers. Third, privacy concerns exist for storing large amounts of sensitive data centrally on one provider’s servers.
UCN alleviates these drawbacks by:
- Using the synergy between social closeness and locality via local ad-hoc network techniques, hence communicating more efficiently and eliminating the need for Internet access
- Offloading data opportunistically to trusted supporting devices, hence keeping mobile traffic (3G / 4G) at a minimum
- Providing services directly between social contacts, hence eliminating third party providers and privacy issues
