Best-effort Group Service in Dynamic Networks

We propose a group membership service for dynamic ad hoc networks. It maintains as long as possible the existing groups and ensures that each group diameter is always smaller than a constant, fixed according to the application using the groups. The proposed protocol is self-stabilizing and works in dynamic distributed systems. Moreover, it ensures a kind of continuity in the service offer to the application while the system is converging, except if too strong topology changes happen. Such a best effort behavior allows applications to rely on the groups while the stabilization has not been reached, which is very useful in dynamic ad hoc networks.