Distributed communication paradigm for wireless community networks

Distributed computing has been widely embraced as a cost-effective means of performing compute-intensive tasks by pooling the computational resources of collaborating systems. We envision the emergence of an analogous approach to communication resource sharing which we call distributed communication. Distributed communication enables sharing a set of relatively low-speed WAN channels emanating from communities of multi-homed devices interconnected with a highspeed wireless LAN. We envisage opportunities to aggregate cellular links from spontaneously formed ad hoc groups of mobile devices, as well as broadband access links (e.g., DSL) from neighboring residences. But, will individuals be willing to share bandwidth as easily as they share bits? A prototype system that we have constructed convinces us that the technical challenges of distributed communication can be overcome. And there appears to be no other means of satisfying the growing demand for access bandwidth as quickly and as cheaply.