The User Information Architecture (UIA) project is designing and implementing a network architecture suited to personal devices. The central idea is to let each user define a personal name-space, to avoid making the user cope with global uniqueness; at the same time, names can be shared with friends, are securely bound to specific devices, and have meaning in a global network. UIA makes the following primary contributions. First, it introduces a simple and intuitive model for connecting mobile devices into personal groups, providing ad hoc user identities, personal names, and secure remote access, without requiring the user to manage keys or certificates explicitly. Second, UIA presents a novel gossip and replication protocol to manage the naming and group state required by this user model, adapting optimistic replication principles previously developed for file systems and databases. Finally, UIA leverages social networking to create a scalable overlay routing algorithm that can provide robust connectivity among social friends and neighbors without relying on central infrastructure. UIA will increase the utility of already-common small devices by providing them with a coherent connectivity architecture.
Broader Impact: UIA makes personal devices first-class citizens in a global network, allowing convenient sharing of information with little configuration. The project involves graduate and undergraduate students in the research, and includes a course about programming UIA on small devices in order to involve a broad range of students.
