Wi-Sh: A Simple, Robust Credit Based Wi-Fi Community Network

— Wireless community networks, where users share wireless bandwidth is attracting tremendous interest from academia and industry. Companies such as FON have been successful in attracting large communities of users. However, solutions such as FON either require users to buy specialized FON routers or firmware modifications to existing routers. In this paper we propose a solution which requires no such sophisticated hardware. An alternative is to provide a solution which requires users to download a client software on to their PCs. While the solution appears simple it raises several issues of incentivizing users to share their bandwidth and also issues of preventing users from cheating behaviors which give them an unfair advantage. In this paper, we propose a system and solution which (i) requires only software downloads on PCs, (ii) is robust to tampering of the software, and intermittent monitoring of an access point by the owner, (iii) a credit based mechanism whereby users earn c...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: INFOCOM
• Authors: Xin Ai, Vikram Srinivasan, Chen-Khong Tham
• Keywords: Communications, FON Routers, INFOCOM 2009, Solutions, Users Earn Credits