MANET Billing system

Short description

Self-forming networks are one of the most promising development areas of WIFI networks nowadays. There are technologies developed for Mobile ad hoc networks (MANET), people possess millions of WIFI devices. But despite all this self-forming networks are few. Only military and rare enthusiasts are building such networks. There are still no commercial implementations, if I am not mistaken.

We think that one of the reasons was the lack of a mechanism (technology) of the mutual accounting between users of the MANET. That is why ISPs are not developing MANET, and the users are not motivated to support networks with the resources of their WIFI devices.

What we suggest is a mutual billing technology, which allows users to earn (or get a discount), serving as a "relay node" in the MANET network.

The main provisions

MANET Billing system consists of 2 (traditional) parts:

1. MANET Billing server (MBS) – the billing server that processes the information coming from the agents and carries out the billing and tariffication.
2. MANET Billing agent (MBA) - the program running on each network device. It sends MBS account records, participates in user authentication and authorization. MBA can be embedded in the device or work as a Java application.

All members of the network can be divided into three groups:

1. Common Users – those who use the network services, but are not involved in the transit transfer of the traffic.
2. Relay Users – those who use the network services and are involved in the traffic transfer.
3. Relay Nodes – they do not use the services, but participate in the traffic transfer.

The MANET Billing system has the following main functions:

1. it performs the function of AAA server (Authentication, Authorization, Accounting).
2. it charges Common Users and Relay Users for the use of the network.
3. it pays Relay Users and Relay Nodes for the transmission traffic services.

Charging system may differ from the traditional one. The criteria can be not only the number of packets transmitted, but also the amount of energy spent by the relay node on the traffic transfer. Such an approach would enable a more equitable way of tariffication, as the battery life of mobile devices is the spending resource.