The design and implementation of large-scale metropolitan-area networks (MANs) for negotiated allotment of wireless broadband access among communities of mobile user groups naturally set off intellectual questions. In open decentralized systems with vulnerability to security problems and scarcity of bandwidth risks, how should community groups of mobile users contribute wireless local area network (WLAN) access points? The framework for the design and implementation of secured trust management in public computing utilities exists in the literature [1]. However, how should a reliable, fair resource-sharing protocol be designed for distributing wireless access points to mobile client roamers?

The authors of this paper put forth a plan, peer-to-peer wireless network confederation (P2PWNC), in which WLAN owners must share bandwidths to provide access points to mobile users seeking entry to neighboring and global networks. In the scheme, users are partitioned into groups that supervise and control a number of WLAN access points connected to cable or digital subscriber line links at locations in an MAN. Each group has an uncertified public/private key pair, and a group leader who preserves the private key. The group leader also enlists and issues certificates and public/private key pairs to members in the decentralized P2PWNC model. Local groups store historical transactions of digitally signed receipts for services provided to consumers of bandwidth. The signed receipts of wireless Internet access consumers contain the public keys of the group service providers, timestamps of sessions, and weights associated with consumed or contributed bandwidths.

The authors present a maximum flow algorithm that uses receipts for decision making in granting wireless network access points among service providers, based on reciprocated wireless service contributions and utilizations among communicating providers. The reciprocity algorithm dynamically computes normalized indicators of services consumed or contributed each time mobile users are connected to or disconnected from group local wireless access points. The performance of the P2PWNC is evaluated on a platform of desktop personal computers, ethernet switches, and a Linksys wireless router that enclosed open Linux distribution firmware. The experimental results reveal minimal overhead due to the execution of the P2PWNC protocol operations. Consequently, the results are reliable enough to recommend the P2PWNC framework for providing roaming capabilities in MANs with bountiful wireless coverage.