Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Mobile Decentralized Search and Retrieval Using SMS and HTTP

  • Published:
Mobile Networks and Applications Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Events over the past year have demonstrated the utility of mobile devices for coordinating mass gatherings and organizing protests in support of social change. However, governments have countered by censoring or disabling centralized search services and social networking sites. This paper describes a decentralized search and retrieval system, named iTrust, that provides resistance against the vulnerabilities of centralized services. It describes the iTrust with SMS interface and the iTrust SMS-HTTP bridge, which enable any SMS-capable mobile phone to communicate with and obtain information from HTTP nodes in the iTrust network. It also describes the iTrust over SMS protocol, which enables mobile phones to communicate directly with each other and share information in a peer-to-peer fashion bypassing the Internet. The paper also describes the Android user interface, which builds on the basic SMS capabilities of mobile phones and offers a user-friendly way of accessing the iTrust with SMS or iTrust over SMS implementation. Finally, the paper presents a performance evaluation of the iTrust search and retrieval system.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10
Fig. 11
Fig. 12
Fig. 13
Fig. 14
Fig. 15
Fig. 16
Fig. 17
Fig. 18
Fig. 19

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Michel Lombera I, Chuang YT, Melliar-Smith PM, Moser LE (2011) Trustworthy distribution and retrieval of information over HTTP and the Internet. In: 3rd international conference on the evolving Internet, Luxembourg City, Luxembourg, pp 7–13

  2. Sohn T, Li KA, Griswold WG, Hollan JD (2008) A diary study of mobile information needs. In: 26th ACM SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems, Florence, Italy, pp 433–442

  3. Kamvar M, Baluja S (2006) A large scale study of wireless search behavior: Google mobile search. In: 24th ACM SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, pp 701–709

  4. Kamvar M, Kellar M, Patel R, Xu Y (2009) Computers and iPhones and mobile phones, oh my!: a log-based comparison of search users on different devices. In: 18th international conference on the World Wide Web, Madrid, Spain, pp 801–810

  5. Church K, Smyth B (2009) Understanding the intent behind mobile information needs, In: 14th international conference on intelligent user interfaces, Sanibel Island, FL, pp 247–256

  6. Larsen J, Axhausen KW, Urry J (2006) Geographies of social networks: meetings, travel and communications. Mobilities 1(2):261–283. Routledge, London, UK

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Tsirulnik G (2011) Global SMS traffic to reach 8.7 trillion by 2015: study. In: Mobile commerce daily, 3 February 2011. http://www.mobilecommercedaily.com/2011/02/03/global-sms-traffic-to-reach-8-7-trillion-by-2015. Accessed 25 Sept 2012

  8. Schusteritsch R, Rao S, Rodden K (2005) Mobile search with text messages: designing the user experience for Google SMS. In: Conference on human factors in computing systems, Portland, OR, pp 1777–1780

  9. Michel Lombera I, Moser LE, Melliar-Smith PM, Chuang YT (2012) A mobile peer-to-peer search and retrieval service for social networks. In: 1st IEEE international conference on mobile services, Honolulu, HI, pp 72–79

  10. Feller W (1968) An introduction to probability theory and its applications I. Wiley, New York

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  11. AOL Mobile: http://mobile.aol.com. Accessed 25 Sept 2012

  12. Google SMS: http://www.google.com/mobile/sms. Accessed 25 Sept 2012

  13. Windows Live Mobile: http://home.mobile.live.com. Accessed 25 Sept 2012

  14. Yahoo! OneSearch: http://mobile.yahoo.com/search. Accessed 25 Sept 2012

  15. Chen J, Linn B, Subramanian L (2009) SMS-based contextual Web search. In: ACM SIGCOMM MobiHeld workshop, Barcelona, Spain, pp 19–24

  16. Chen J, Subramanian L, Brewer E (2010) SMS-based Web search for low-end mobile devices. In: 16th ACM MobiCom international conference on mobile computing and networking, Chicago, IL, pp 125–136

  17. Mischke J, Stiller B (2004) A methodology for the design of distributed search in P2P middleware. IEEE Network 18(1):30–37

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Risson J, Moors T (2007) Survey of research towards robust peer-to-peer networks: search methods. Technical Report UNSW-EE-P2P-1-1, University of New South Wales, RFC 4981, http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4981. Accessed 25 Sept 2012

  19. Tsoumakos D, Roussopoulos N (2003) A comparison of peer-to-peer search methods. In: 6th international workshop on the Web and databases, San Diego, CA, pp 61–66

  20. Gnutella: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnutella. Accessed 25 Sept 2012

  21. Yang B, Garcia-Molina H (2002) Improving search in peer-to-peer networks. In: 22nd IEEE international conference on distributed computing systems, Vienna, Austria, pp 5–14

  22. Chawathe Y, Ratnasamy S, Breslau L, Lanham N, Shenker S (2003) Making Gnutella-like P2P systems scalable, In: ACM SIGCOMM applications technologies, architectures and protocols for computer communications conference, Karlsruhe, Germany, pp 407–418

  23. Clarke I, Sandberg O, Wiley B, Hong T (2001) Freenet: a distributed anonymous information storage and retrieval system. In: Workshop on design issues in anonymity and unobservability, Berkeley, CA. Lecture notes in computer science 2009. Springer, Heidelberg, pp 46–66

    Google Scholar 

  24. Hu H, Thai B, Seneviratne A (2003) Supporting mobile devices in Gnutella file sharing network with mobile agents. In: 8th IEEE symposium on computers and communications, Kemer-Antalya, Turkey

  25. Lindemann C, Waldhorst OP (2002) A distributed search service for peer-to-peer file sharing in mobile applications. In: 2nd international conference on peer-to-peer computing, Linkoping, Sweden, pp 73–80

  26. Papadopouli M, Schulzrinne H (2001) Effects of power conservation, wireless coverage and cooperation on data dissemination among mobile devices. In: ACM symposium on mobile ad hoc networking and computing, Long Beach, CA, pp 117–127

  27. Gummadi KP, Mislove A, Druschel P (2006) Exploiting social networks for Internet search. In: 5th ACM SIGCOMM workshop on hot topics in networks, Irvine, CA, pp 79–84

  28. Tiago P, Kotiainen N, Vapa M, Kokkinen H, Nurminen JK (2008) Mobile search—social network search using mobile devices. In: 5th IEEE consumer communications and networking conference, Las Vegas, NV, pp 1201–1205

  29. Yang J, Zhong Y, Zhang S (2003) An efficient interest-group-based search mechanism in unstructured peer-to-peer networks. In: International conference on computer networks and mobile computing, Shanghai, China, pp 247–252

  30. Wong B, Guha S (2008) Quasar: a probabilistic publish-subscribe system for social networks. In: 7th international workshop on peer-to-peer systems, Tampa Bay, FL

  31. Isdal T, Piatek M, Krishnamurthy A, Anderson T (2010) Privacy preserving P2P data sharing with OneSwarm. In: ACM SIGCOMM special interest group on data communications conference, New Delhi, India, pp 111–122

  32. Cutillo LA, Molva R, Onen M (2011) Safebook: a distributed privacy preserving online social network, In: IEEE world of wireless, mobile, and multimedia networks conference, Lucca, Italy, pp 1–6

  33. Michel Lombera I, Chuang YT, Moser LE, Melliar-Smith PM (2011) Decentralized mobile search and retrieval using SMS and HTTP to support social change. In: 3rd international conference on mobile computing, applications, and services, Los Angeles, CA, pp 152–171

Download references

Acknowledgements

This research was supported in part by grant NSF CNS 10-16193. An earlier and shorter conference version of this paper appeared in [33].

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, USA

    Isaí Michel Lombera, L. E. Moser, P. M. Melliar-Smith & Yung-Ting Chuang

Authors
  1. Isaí Michel Lombera
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. L. E. Moser
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. P. M. Melliar-Smith
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Yung-Ting Chuang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to L. E. Moser.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Michel Lombera, I., Moser, L.E., Melliar-Smith, P.M. et al. Mobile Decentralized Search and Retrieval Using SMS and HTTP. Mobile Netw Appl 18, 22–41 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11036-012-0412-0

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11036-012-0412-0

Keywords

Search

Navigation