Many-to-Many Invocation: A New Object Oriented Paradigm for Ad Hoc Collaborative Systems

Many-to-Many Invocation (M2MI) is a new paradigm for building collaborative systems that run in wireless proximal ad hoc networks of xed and mobile computing devices. M2MI is useful for building a broad range of systems, including multiuser applications (conversations, groupware, multiplayer games); systems involving networked devices (printers, cameras, sensors); and collaborative middleware systems. M2MI provides an object oriented method call abstraction based on broadcasting. An M2MI invocation means \Every object out there that implements this interface, call this method. An M2MI-based application is built by de ning one or more interfaces, creating objects that implement those interfaces in all the participating devices, and broadcasting method invocations to all the objects on all the devices. M2MI is layered on top of a new messaging protocol, the Many-to-Many Protocol (M2MP), which broadcasts messages to all nearby devices using the wireless network\u27s inherent broadcast nature instead of routing messages from device to device. M2MI synthesizes remote method invocation proxies dynamically at run time, eliminating the need to compile and deploy proxies ahead of time. As a result, in an M2MI-based system, central servers are not required; network administration is not required; complicated, resource-consuming ad hoc routing protocols are not required; and system development and deployment are simplifi ed