Trustworthy Opportunistic Access to the Internet of Services

Nowadays web services pervade the network experience of the users. Indeed, most of our activities over the internet consist in accessing remote services and interact with them. Clearly, this can happen only when two elements are available: (i) a compatible device and (ii) a suitable network connection. The recent improvement of the computational capabilities of mobile devices, e.g., tablets and smartphones, seriously mitigated the first aspect. Instead, the inappropriateness, or even the absence, of connectivity is still a major issue. Although mobile, third generation (3G) networks can provide basic connectivity, complex interactions with web services often require different levels of Quality of Service (QoS). Also, 3G connectivity is only available in certain areas, e.g., user’s country, and purchasing temporary connection abroad can be very costly. These costs weigh down on the original service price, seriously impacting the web service business model. In this paper we describe the problems arising when considering the orchestration of service-oriented opportunistic networks and we present the assumptions that we want to consider in our context. We claim that our model is realistic mainly for two reasons: (i) we consider state-of-the-art technology and technical trends and (ii) we refer to a concrete problem for service providers.