Department for Electrical and Communications Engineering

Networking Laboratory

S-38.3151 Delay-tolerant Networking (DTN) - 3 ECTS

News

• 3.9.2008: Updated website for 2008

Overview

DTN is an emerging research area that takes a different approach to (inter)networking and allows to work in stressed as well as in highly heterogeneous environments. DTN features a number of unique properties which make this concept applicable to challenged networking environments in which traditional communication paradigms would fail or perform rather poorly: DTN uses only communication based upon asynchronous messaging, does not rely on the existence of an end-to-end path at any point in time, and combines store-and-forward message delivery with physical data carriage. DTN technologies may be applied for challenged static network setups (including, for example inter-planetary or underwater communications) but is also applied to (sparse) mobile ad-hoc networks to enable communications. Deterministic and/or probabilistic routing mechanisms are applied depending on the respective environment. This course will introduce the fundamentals of this relatively young research are and explore some specific aspects in (practical) assignments.

The course will combine lectures with two assignments.

Contact

For questions concerning the course, please use the Newsgroup opinnot.sahko.s-38.tietoverkkotekniikka or send mail to

• Teemu Kärkkäinen <teemuk (at) netlab.tkk.fi>
• Jörg Ott <jo (at) netlab.tkk.fi>

Lectures and exercises

Lectures will be held: Monday 10 - 12 (I346) and Tuesday 12 - 14 (I346).

The lectures, exercises, and the exam will in English language.

Requirements and grading

To pass the course, the two assignments must be completed and the written exam must be passed.

Time Table

Material

The lecture material (slides) will be available in digital format (PDF) from this web page.

As DTN is a new field of research, there is only one book on the topic. You may purchase this book, but all the required material for the course will be available on the slides and in research papers.

The book

• Stephen Farrell and Vinny Cahill: "Delay- And Disruption Tolerant Networking" Artech House, 2005. ISBN 1-59693-063-2

RFCs and Internet-Drafts

• Delay-Tolerant Networking Architecture
• Bundle Protocol Specification
• Delay-Tolerant Networking Security Overview
• Bundle Security Protocol Specification

Articles

Architecture:

• A Delay-Tolerant Network Architecture for Challenged Internets - Kevin Fall

• Routing Strategies for Delay-Tolerant Networks - Evan P.C. Jones and Paul A.S. Ward
• Routing in Intermittently Connected Mobile Ad Hoc Networks and Delay Tolerant Networks: Overview and Challenges - Zhensheng Zhang
• Routing in a Delay Tolerant Network - Sushant Jain, Kevin Fall, and Rabin Patra
• Practical Routing in Delay-Tolerant Networks - Evan P.C. Jones, Lily Li, and Paul A.S. Ward
• Epidemic Routing for Partially-Connected Ad Hoc Networks - A. Vahdat and D. Becker
• Probabilistic Routing in Intermittently Connected Networks - A. Lindgren, A. Doria and O. Schelén

• [mandatory] Multicasting in Delay Tolerant Networks: Semantic Models and Routing Algorithms - Wenrui Zhao, Mostafa Ammar, and Ellen Zegura
• [mandatory] Delay-Tolerant Broadcasting - Gunnar Karlsson, Vincent Lenders, and Martin May
• Opportunistic Content Distribution in an Urban Setting - Jérémie Leguay et al.

• Applicability of Identity-Based Cryptography for Disruption-Tolerant Networking - N. Asokan et al.
• Security Considerations in Space and Delay Tolerant Networks - S. Farrell and Vinny Cahill
• Also see the security related internet drafts above

• Application Protocol Design Considerations for a Mobile Internet - Joerg Ott