| 5 | | Ariba is an overlay-based middleware that implements the underlay abstraction layer of the [http://www.spovnet.de Spontaneous Virtual Networks] (SpoVNet) architecture. It aims to ease the development of fexible, adaptive, and spontaneous overlay-based services and applications on top of heterogeneous and mobile networks. To this end, Ariba provides generic mechanisms for establishing and maintaining communication links across heterogeneous underlay networks using an identifier based addressing scheme. Building upon these mechanisms, applications can spontaneously establish an invariant virtual network substrate and use it for subsequent communication. |
| | 5 | Ariba provides what services, and application seek: ''seamless connectivity that "just works"''. Providing this connectivity has increased challenges, e.g., wireless network access, mobility, heterogenity, and, middle-boxes (e.g., firewalls, or NAT gateways) impede end-to-end communication and, therefore, the development of new services and application. Each challenge has its tailored solutions. However, most of these solutions need support by the infrastructure, require manual configuration and do not adapt to changing conditions. Furthermore, they often do not run across heterogeneous networks (e.g., pure IPv4, IPv6, or different networks behind NAT-gateways). |
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| | 7 | To ease development of services and applications, and, to deploy them spontaneously, we developed the ariba framework which is part of the spontaneous virtual networks (SpoVNet) project. Ariba provides service and application developers, a simple, yet extensive, interface which addresses the challenges described above. To this end, ariba itself uses Peer-to-Peer (P2P) techniques, to be independent of dedicated infrastructure, and, therefore, shares sharing resources between end-systems. Ariba deploys such an P2P overlay network for each application. Self-organization minimizes the configuration overhead. The structure of the P2P overlay network adapts to changing underlying network conditions. Therefore, applications do not need dedicated mechanisms to handle communication interrupts, or mobility. To operate upon different networks ariba uses other participants as "relay" to provide connectivity between all participants. |
