MyNet: A Platform for Secure P2P Personal and Social Networking Services

Recent advances in peer-to-peer (P2P) technologies will enable users to establish ubiquitous connectivity among their personal networked devices and those of others. Building on top of such technologies, we propose a platform of middleware and user interaction tools, called MyNet, that allows everyday users to easily and securely access and share with others their devices, services, and content, without requiring expertise or centralized service support. MyNet offers a more immediate and responsive alternative to the current web-based paradigm of personal and social networking, because it allows users’ distributed services and content to be accessed and shared in real-time as they are produced, directly from their personal devices. In this paper, we describe the MyNet system architecture, including secure resource discovery, service management, security framework, and the user interaction tools for building personal and social networks and sharing resources over them. We also present our proof-of-concept implementation, including mobile devices and our tests with real users.