MIMES

Mobile Embedded Peer-to-Peer (MEP2P) Systems introduce new challenges in the development of software for distributed systems. MEP2P systems have brought about an important revolution in distributed computing paradigms, now that the roles of client and server, which were the basis of the most widely used distributed computation models, are disappearing. The new scenario consists of systems in which all the elements of the network are symmetrical and in most cases the mechanisms of communication are not based on pre-existing infrastructures, but rather on dynamic ad-hoc networks among peers. At the same time, recent technological advances in short distance wireless communications have opened up new application areas which represent important technological challenges. In addition, MEP2P systems are extremely vulnerable against various types of internal or external attacks, due to resource constraints, lack of tamper-resistant packaging, and the very nature of open and public communication channels. One of the key factors for the success of MEP2P systems is the possibility of abstracting all the above mentioned problems by means of convenient middleware. Such middleware should hide the complexity of the underlying infrastructure while providing open interfaces to third parties for application development. The development of such a middleware is challenging, since besides the disappearance of the roles of client and server, other critical requirements appear, which have to be supported by these infrastructures, such as mobility, new security problems, or discovery and routing issues.