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Abstract-In densely populated cities, Wi-Fi networks-private or otherwise-are ubiquitous. We focus on the provision of citywide broadband communication capability to mobile users through private Wi-Fi networks that are in range but belong to others. We form a club that relies on indirect reciprocity: Members participate in the club and provide free Wi-Fi access to other members in order to enjoy the same benefit when they are away from their own Wi-Fi network. Our club scheme does not require registration with an authority and does not rely on centrally issued club identities: Members create their own identities (public-private key pairs) and receive signed digital receipts when they provide Wi-Fi service to other members. These receipts form a distributed receipt graph, parts of which are used as input to an indirect reciprocity algorithm that classifies club members according to their contribution. We show that our algorithm can sustain cooperation within the club and is robust to attacks by free-riders. We implement and evaluate our proposed club algorithms on commodity Wi-Fi routers and dual-mode cellular/Wi-Fi phones. Because we anticipate that Wi-Fi telephony will be a popular club application, we present and evaluate a secure and decentralized architecture for citywide voice (and multimedia) communications that is compatible with our club both from an architectural as well as an incentives perspective.

We make the case for a Global Confederation of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Wireless Local Area Networks. A P2P Wireless Network Confederation (P2PWNC) is a community of administrative domains that offer wireless Internet access to each other's registered users. The ubiquitous Internet access that the roaming users of these domains could enjoy compensates for their home domain's cost of providing access to visitors. Existing roaming schemes utilize central authorities or bilateral contracts to control access to resources. In contrast, a P2PWNC forms a pure P2P community in which participating domains are autonomous entities. Domains make independent decisions concerning the amount of bandwidth they contribute. As a result, similarly to existing P2P systems, a P2PWNC will suffer from "free-riding" if no incentive mechanisms exist to ensure that domains offer the amount of resources that is economically justified. Flexible rules on reciprocity can be set to delimit domain actions and encourage domains to provide in order to consume. In this paper, we present several aspects of the P2PWNC requirements and design. We outline several P2PWNC implementation issues relating to user privacy and the confederation's real-world deployment. We also describe the P2PWNC prototype that we developed.

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SUMMARYWe argue that access to wireless LAN (WLAN) hotspots can be shared in a peer-to-peer manner. In the hotspot-sharing scheme that we propose, peers are encouraged to keep their residential WLANs open, offering Internet access to peers passing by. We call our scheme peer-to-peer wireless network confederation (P2PWNC). Payments in P2PWNC are only 'in kind'. We are motivated by the widespread availability of wireless LAN equipments and the proliferation of residential broadband connections. P2PWNC enables unified wireless LAN roaming without central authorities and without the administrative overhead that is usually associated with such efforts. In this paper, we present and evaluate the decentralised design of P2PWNC.