Networking in personal networks

This paper addresses networking in terms of tunnels and overlays establishment, naming, addressing and routing for Personal Networks (PN). A number of concepts to achieve PN networking and management are presented. A PN Agent is introduced in the PN architecture. The Agent supplies information about clusters constituting the PN to enable networking within the PN. The paper also explores the use of edge routers in the overall framework to support PN networking via virtual private network paradigms and PN services. The virtual router concept, well established for layer 3 VPN solutions in networks, is advocated to resolve scalability and latency requirements in PN networking. A hybrid solution involving both end users and provider provisioned VPNs to establish personal network overlays is suggested to find a compromise between performance and security requirements. Proactive and reactive routing along with flat and subnet based addressing for PN are also covered by this contribution