One of the open issues in today’s networking world is efficient content retrieval, storage, and provision. Numerous studies have been carried out in order to optimize the distribution and provision of content to end users. This is emphasized in today’s mobile networks that the ubiquity of network resources is considered an expected fact. In this paper we propose an architecture that is based on node co-operation that enhances the content distribution and retrieval. The architecture consists of the formation of loosely coupled and autonomous communities among nodes that share common interests where the already existing content is shared in a “common pool”. The co-operation is enforced by the acquisition of extra bandwidth that is distributed to the most helpful members. The autonomic aspect of the communities is based on the embedded mechanisms for cluster behavior, namely, voting, where the nodes decide themselves which members should be awarded, and reporting, where misbehaving nodes are removed from the community. In this paper the different elements of the architecture will be described, together with a theoretic study of its viability, and finally a set of simulations that evaluate its performance.
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