A Decentralized VPN Service Over Generalized Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks

Overview

This paper presents a decentralized VPN service that can be built over generalized mobile ad-hoc networks (Generalized MANETs), in which topologies can be represented as a time-varying directed multigraph. The paper addresses wireless ad-hoc networks and overlay ad-hoc networks as instances of Generalized MANETs. The paper first proposes an architecture to operate on various kinds of networks through a single set of operations. Then, it designs and implement a decentralized VPN service on the proposed architecture. Through the development and operation of a prototype system the paper implemented, it found that the proposed architecture makes the VPN service applicable to each instance of Generalized MANETs, and that the VPN service makes it possible for unmodified applications to operate on the networks.