Enhancing Opportunistic Networks with Legacy Nodes

Mobile opportunistic networking utilizes device-to-device commu-nication to provide messaging and content sharing mechanisms be-tween mobile users without the need for supporting infrastructure networks. However, enabling opportunistic networking in prac-tice requires a sufficient number of users to download, install, and run the respective routing and application software to provide suf-ficient node density, and thus connectivity for the network to ac-tually function. In this paper, we explore reaching out to nodes that have not (yet) installed any dedicated software to: (1) allow them to access public content in an opportunistic network to possi-bly seed their interest and (2) instrument them to assist as (limited) message carriers to improve connectivity. We report on our system design and implementation and offer performance insights gained from simulations and initial experiments