Increasing Data Resilience of Mobile Devices with a Collaborative Backup Service

TL;DR

This paper proposes a transparent collaborative backup system for mobile devices that enhances data resilience by sharing data among devices between connections to a global infrastructure, reducing data loss risks.

Contribution

It introduces a novel collaborative backup approach that leverages mobile device cooperation to improve data resilience beyond traditional fixed station backups.

Findings

Data can be effectively replicated across mobile devices.

The system increases resilience against data loss.

Implementation details for the collaborative backup are provided.

Abstract

Whoever has had his cell phone stolen knows how frustrating it is to be unable to get his contact list back. To avoid data loss when losing or destroying a mobile device like a PDA or a cell phone, data is usually backed-up to a fixed station. However, in the time between the last backup and the failure, important data can have been produced and then lost. To handle this issue, we propose a transparent collaborative backup system. Indeed, by saving data on other mobile devices between two connections to a global infrastructure, we can resist to such scenarios. In this paper, after a general description of such a system, we present a way to replicate data on mobile devices to attain a prerequired resilience for the backup.