When TCP breaks: Delay- and Disruption- tolerant networking

Abstract

The authors give an overview of current work on delay- and disruption-tolerant networking and review the overall architecture proposed by the Internet Research Task Force?s Delay Tolerant Networking Research Group.Their approach to networking makes no assumption that nodes will have end-to-end connectivity, which could be missing with extremely high-latency connections, if the nodes are only in contact with one another infrequently or if contacts are being continually disrupted. They also describe the main protocols the group is developing and give examples of some pilot networks that use these protocols.