Voluntary cooperation in pervasive computing services

The advent of pervasive computing is moving us towards a new paradigm for computing in terms of ad hoc services. This carries with it a certain risk, from a security and management viewpoint. Users become increasingly responsible for their own hosts. A form of service transaction based on minimal trust is discussed. A proof of concept implementation of non-demand (voluntary) services is discussed for pervasive computing environments. 'Voluntary Remote Procedure Call' is a test-implementation of the proposed protocol integrated into cfengine, to show how voluntary cooperation of nodes can allow a cautious exchange of collaborative services, based on minimal trust. An analysis of implementation approaches followed by a discussion of the desirability of this technology is presented.