[Tfug] Naming scheme

[Bexley Hall]

Hi,

I'm working on a wearable appliance with wireless
networking.  Probably BT or ZigBee (the former
wins on bandwidth, the latter wins on power
consumption -- a big issue when you have to carry
your power with you!).

I'm looking for ideas for a naming scheme whereby
proximate users can merge into "your" namespace
to make their "public" data available for your
perusal/use.

E.g., imagine your namespace looks like:

/Me
  /AddressBook
  /Calendar
  /PublicFiles
  /PrivateStuff
  ...
/JohnDoe
  /AddressBook
  /Calendar
  /PublicFiles
  ...
/MarySmith
  /AddressBook
  /Calendar
  /PublicFiles
  ...
...

I.e., I can look at my AddressBook as /Me/AddressBook.
Or, some of my "private files" as /Me/PrivateFiles/...
Or, John Doe's calendar as /JohnDoe/Calendar (to see
if he has some free time to meet with me tomorrow
while we are chatting...).  Or, Mary Smith's address
book to get her contact information, etc.

Of course, I can only *see* those items that those
folks have made available for "public" consumption.
And, they can only see *my* items that I have opted
to make similarly available.  (Of course, I can
add "priviledged" users to my machine who can then
access materials that I have made available explicitly
for them, etc.)

Making data available for "anonymous" access is
easy.  The problem is making data from anonymous
*users* available to *me*!  I.e. I have no way of
forcing them to adopt a name that I can recognize
(though they could always *tell* me what their
"system name" is).  Nor can I guarantee that the
name they choose is not ambiguous (e.g., JohnDoe!).

Is this just an inherently unsolvable problem?
Or, has someone come up with a scheme that allows
decentralized AD-HOC naming systems?
(note, I can get a "unique identifier" from the
underlying network layers so that I can later
re-recognize the same "user/device"... e.g., like
the NIC's MAC).

Hopefully it will be an entertaining problem to
ponder  ;-)

Thanks!
--don

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