Spontaneous windows file sharing via virtual groups

Abstract

Although file and printer sharing services have been deployed almost ubiquitously for a long time as part of Microsoft Windows, only recent peer-to-peer applications popularized file-sharing on a global scale. As the Windows CIFS protocol was designed for local area networks, its use has been confined to relatively small environments. We propose a mechanism to set up spontaneous virtual groups that allow to use legacy Windows file and printer sharing globally in virtual LANs.