Implementing Messaging Services on Ad Hoc Community Networks using Proxy Nodes

Implementing messaging services (both off-line email and on-line instant messaging) are critically important in any community network. However, this is a difficult task in ad hoc community networks with dynamic topology and decentralized control. This paper is an attempt to propose a framework towards implementation of messaging services on ad hoc community network. In an ad hoc community network with decentralized control, there is no known mechanism to ensure delivery of e-mail messages from a member of the community (currently on-line but will go off-line anytime) to another member or a group of members of the community, who are currently off-line (but will join the net eventually). At the same time, implementation of on-line, instant messaging services, which relies on some form of effective connection management protocol to ensure a continuous connectivity among a group of users, are also difficult because of dynamic topology. We have introduced a notion of proxy and implemented it. A proxy-node is an on-line node that would perform some of the task of a node, which is currently off-line. At the same time, we have implemented a presence awareness and connection management protocol to ensure continuous connectivity among a group of on-line users in order to implement the instant messaging services over the network.