The modern communications era has brought about a tremendous expansion of wireline and wireless networks. Networking technologies have experienced an unprecedented technological expansion, fueled by consumer demand. In particular, wireless and mobile networking technologies have addressed related consumer demands, while providing more flexibility and immediacy of information transfer.
With the increased expansion of networking technologies, complexities in networking technologies have also arisen. In particular, due to the expansion of networks and the massive number of devices that may be connected to various networks, complexities in communications routing have arisen. To resolve issues with communications routing, conventional network devices may include communications routing software to facilitate the routing of communications within the network. Often these software implemented routing solutions may come pre-installed on all network devices. The solutions may implement a protocol that provides for determining which devices are currently connected to the network and pathways between these various network entities as well as for sharing this information.
However, complexities can arise when network devices are not pre-installed with communications routing software. In particular, complexities can arise when a device without pre-installed communications routing software desires to communicate through a first network device to a second network device (i.e., multi-hopping). In particular, issues with regard to communication routing when no communication routing software is installed on some or all network devices may pose issues for social proximity network (SPN) environments.
In an SPN environment, network devices, such as, for example, cellular telephones, may communicate with each other when the network devices are within a particular proximity with each other. For example, the proximate area may encompass a shopping mall, a downtown city block, a restaurant, a theme park, or the like. SPNs also add complexity due to the fact that networked devices may be mobile and therefore a device's connection to the network may be dynamic, adding to the complexity of communication routing.
Accordingly, it may be desirable to develop a mechanism that may provide for communications routing on communications networks. In particular, it may be desirable to provide a mechanism for providing communications routing on networks that may include devices that do not include installed communication routing software.