Delay Tolerant Networks: Protocols and Applications

Book Preface

The standardization of the IP protocol and its mapping into network-specific link-layer data frames at each router as required supports interoperability using a packet-switched model of service. Although often not explicitly stated, a number of key assumptions are made regarding the overall performance characteristics of the underlying links in order to achieve smooth operation:

• an end-to-end path exists between a data source and its peers,

• the maximum round-trip time between any node pairs in the network is not excessive, and

• the end-to-end packet drop probability is small.

Unfortunately, a class of Delay Tolerant Networks (DTN), which may violate one or more of the assumptions, is becoming important and may not be well served by the current end-to-end TCP/IP model.