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CRDT-based Collaborative Editing in OppNets: a Practical Experiment

Authors:
Yves Mahéo
Frédéric Guidec
Camille Noûs

Keywords: Opportunistic networking; Experiment; CRDT; Collaborative editing.

Abstract:
Developing distributed applications for opportunistic networks (OppNets) has mainly relied on the message passing paradigm so far. Yet the sharing of distributed data is an alternative worth considering, and Conflict-Free Replicated Datatypes (CRDTs) are interesting candidates for this purpose. A CRDT is a distributed data type that supports optimistic replication, and whose global consistency can be maintained based solely on occasional synchronizations of replicas. In an OppNet, these synchronizations can be driven by the contacts between mobile devices, without any need for network-wide routing. CRDTs can thus serve as interesting software building blocks to develop distributed applications for OppNets. In this paper, we demonstrate the feasibility of using CRDTs in OppNets by presenting an experiment conducted in real conditions, involving a collaborative editing application in which communication relies exclusively on opportunistic contacts between laptops. The software elements used in the experiment consist mainly of a CRDT-based text editor, and a communication module that supports the synchronization between laptops, so as to ensure the eventual consistency of the shared document. Experimentation results are detailed, that confirm the viability and usability of this approach.

Pages: 13 to 21

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2023

Publication date: September 25, 2023

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-4278

ISBN: 978-1-68558-106-0

Location: Porto, Portugal

Dates: from September 25, 2023 to September 29, 2023