Delay-tolerant networking

Last updated

Delay-tolerant networking (DTN) is an approach to computer network architecture that seeks to address the technical issues in heterogeneous networks that may lack continuous network connectivity. Examples of such networks are those operating in mobile or extreme terrestrial environments, or planned networks in space.

Contents

Recently,[ when? ] the term disruption-tolerant networking has gained currency in the United States due to support from DARPA, which has funded many DTN projects. Disruption may occur because of the limits of wireless radio range, sparsity of mobile nodes, energy resources, attack, and noise.

History

In the 1970s, spurred by the decreasing size of computers, researchers began developing technology for routing between non-fixed locations of computers. While the field of ad hoc routing was inactive throughout the 1980s, the widespread use of wireless protocols reinvigorated the field in the 1990s as mobile ad hoc networking (MANET) and vehicular ad hoc networking became areas of increasing interest.

Concurrently with (but separate from) the MANET activities, DARPA had funded NASA, MITRE and others to develop a proposal for the Interplanetary Internet (IPN). Internet pioneer Vint Cerf and others developed the initial IPN architecture, relating to the necessity of networking technologies that can cope with the significant delays and packet corruption of deep-space communications. In 2002, Kevin Fall started to adapt some of the ideas in the IPN design to terrestrial networks and coined the term delay-tolerant networking and the DTN acronym. A paper published in 2003 SIGCOMM conference gives the motivation for DTNs. [1] The mid-2000s brought about increased interest in DTNs, including a growing number of academic conferences on delay and disruption-tolerant networking, and growing interest in combining work from sensor networks and MANETs with the work on DTN. This field saw many optimizations on classic ad hoc and delay-tolerant networking algorithms and began to examine factors such as security, reliability, verifiability, and other areas of research that are well understood in traditional computer networking.

Routing

The ability to transport, or route, data from a source to a destination is a fundamental ability all communication networks must have. Delay and disruption-tolerant networks (DTNs), are characterized by their lack of connectivity, resulting in a lack of instantaneous end-to-end paths. In these challenging environments, popular ad hoc routing protocols such as AODV [2] and DSR [3] fail to establish routes. This is due to these protocols trying to first establish a complete route and then, after the route has been established, forward the actual data. However, when instantaneous end-to-end paths are difficult or impossible to establish, routing protocols must take to a "store and forward" approach, where data is incrementally moved and stored throughout the network in hopes that it will eventually reach its destination. [4] [5] [6] A common technique used to maximize the probability of a message being successfully transferred is to replicate many copies of the message in the hope that one will succeed in reaching its destination. [7] This is feasible only on networks with large amounts of local storage and internode bandwidth relative to the expected traffic. In many common problem spaces, this inefficiency is outweighed by the increased efficiency and shortened delivery times made possible by taking maximum advantage of available unscheduled forwarding opportunities. In others, where available storage and internode throughput opportunities are more tightly constrained, a more discriminate algorithm is required.

Other concerns

Bundle protocols

In efforts to provide a shared framework for algorithm and application development in DTNs, RFC   4838 and 5050 were published in 2007 to define a common abstraction to software running on disrupted networks. Commonly known as the Bundle Protocol, this protocol defines a series of contiguous data blocks as a bundle—where each bundle contains enough semantic information to allow the application to make progress where an individual block may not. Bundles are routed in a store and forward manner between participating nodes over varied network transport technologies (including both IP and non-IP based transports). The transport layers carrying the bundles across their local networks are called bundle convergence layers. The bundle architecture therefore operates as an overlay network, providing a new naming architecture based on Endpoint Identifiers (EIDs) and coarse-grained class of service offerings.

Protocols using bundling must leverage application-level preferences for sending bundles across a network. Due to the store and forward nature of delay-tolerant protocols, routing solutions for delay-tolerant networks can benefit from exposure to application-layer information. For example, network scheduling can be influenced if application data must be received in its entirety, quickly, or without variation in packet delay. Bundle protocols collect application data into bundles that can be sent across heterogeneous network configurations with high-level service guarantees. The service guarantees are generally set by the application level, and the RFC   5050 Bundle Protocol specification includes "bulk", "normal", and "expedited" markings.

In October 2014 the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) instantiated a Delay Tolerant Networking working group to review and revise the protocol specified in RFC   5050. The Bundle Protocol for CCSDS [8] is a profile of RFC 5050 specifically addressing the Bundle Protocol's utility for data communication in space missions.

As of January 2022, the IETF published the following RFCs related to BPv7: RFC   9171 , 9172 , 9173 , 9174.

Security issues

Addressing security issues has been a major focus of the bundle protocol. Possible attacks take the form of nodes behaving as a "black hole" or a "flooder". [9] [10]

Security concerns for delay-tolerant networks vary depending on the environment and application, though authentication and privacy are often critical. These security guarantees are difficult to establish in a network without continuous bi-directional end-to-end paths between devices because the network hinders complicated cryptographic protocols, hinders key exchange, and each device must identify other intermittently visible devices. [11] [12] Solutions have typically been modified from mobile ad hoc network and distributed security research, such as the use of distributed certificate authorities [13] and PKI schemes. Original solutions from the delay-tolerant research community include: 1) the use of identity-based encryption, which allows nodes to receive information encrypted with their public identifier; [14] and 2) the use of tamper-evident tables with a gossiping protocol; [15]

Implementations

There are a number of implementations of the Bundle Protocol:

BPv6 (RFC 5050, Bundle Protocol for CCSDS)

The main implementation of BPv6 are listed below. A number of other implementations exist.

BPv7 (Internet Research Task Force RFC)

The draft of BPv7 lists six known implementations. [16]

Other NASA open source DTN for BPv7 implementations

Research efforts

Various research efforts are currently investigating the issues involved with DTN:

Some research efforts look at DTN for the Interplanetary Internet by examining use of the Bundle Protocol in space:

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of the Internet</span>

The history of the Internet has its origin in the efforts of scientists and engineers to build and interconnect computer networks. The Internet Protocol Suite, the set of rules used to communicate between networks and devices on the Internet, arose from research and development in the United States and involved international collaboration, particularly with researchers in the United Kingdom and France.

Quality of service (QoS) is the description or measurement of the overall performance of a service, such as a telephony or computer network, or a cloud computing service, particularly the performance seen by the users of the network. To quantitatively measure quality of service, several related aspects of the network service are often considered, such as packet loss, bit rate, throughput, transmission delay, availability, jitter, etc.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vint Cerf</span> American computer scientist (born 1943)

Vinton Gray Cerf is an American Internet pioneer and is recognized as one of "the fathers of the Internet", sharing this title with TCP/IP co-developer Bob Kahn.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wireless mesh network</span> Radio nodes organized in a mesh topology

A wireless mesh network (WMN) is a communications network made up of radio nodes organized in a mesh topology. It can also be a form of wireless ad hoc network.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Optimized Link State Routing Protocol</span> IP routing protocol optimized for mobile ad hoc networks

The Optimized Link State Routing Protocol (OLSR) is an IP routing protocol optimized for mobile ad hoc networks, which can also be used on other wireless ad hoc networks. OLSR is a proactive link-state routing protocol, which uses hello and topology control (TC) messages to discover and then disseminate link state information throughout the mobile ad hoc network. Individual nodes use this topology information to compute next hop destinations for all nodes in the network using shortest hop forwarding paths.

Ad hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV) Routing is a routing protocol for mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) and other wireless ad hoc networks. It was jointly developed by Charles Perkins and Elizabeth Royer and was first published in the ACM 2nd IEEE Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications in February 1999.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Interplanetary Internet</span> Model of Internet between planets

The interplanetary Internet is a conceived computer network in space, consisting of a set of network nodes that can communicate with each other. These nodes are the planet's orbiters and landers, and the Earth ground stations. For example, the orbiters collect the scientific data from the Curiosity rover on Mars through near-Mars communication links, transmit the data to Earth through direct links from the Mars orbiters to the Earth ground stations, and finally the data routed through Earth's internal internet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Computer network</span> Network that allows computers to share resources and communicate with each other

A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes. Computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections are made up of telecommunication network technologies based on physically wired, optical, and wireless radio-frequency methods that may be arranged in a variety of network topologies.

6LoWPAN was a working group of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). It was created with the intention of applying the Internet Protocol (IP) even to the smallest devices, enabling low-power devices with limited processing capabilities to participate in the Internet of Things.

Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) are created by applying the principles of mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) – the spontaneous creation of a wireless network of mobile devices – to the domain of vehicles. VANETs were first mentioned and introduced in 2001 under "car-to-car ad-hoc mobile communication and networking" applications, where networks can be formed and information can be relayed among cars. It was shown that vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-roadside communications architectures will co-exist in VANETs to provide road safety, navigation, and other roadside services. VANETs are a key part of the intelligent transportation systems (ITS) framework. Sometimes, VANETs are referred as Intelligent Transportation Networks. They are understood as having evolved into a broader "Internet of vehicles". which itself is expected to ultimately evolve into an "Internet of autonomous vehicles".

A wireless ad hoc network (WANET) or mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a decentralized type of wireless network. The network is ad hoc because it does not rely on a pre-existing infrastructure, such as routers or wireless access points. Instead, each node participates in routing by forwarding data for other nodes. The determination of which nodes forward data is made dynamically on the basis of network connectivity and the routing algorithm in use.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">InterPlaNet</span> Long-ranged communications and networking protocol

InterPlaNet (IPN), not to be confused with InterPlanetary Network, is a computer networking protocol designed to operate at interplanetary distances, where traditional protocols such as the Internet Protocol break down. It is the base for Interplanetary Internet. It has been under development by Vint Cerf and NASA since 1998 and a permanent network link to Mars was planned by 2008 until the Mars Telecommunications Orbiter was canceled in 2005. The protocol was expected to be space-qualified and ready for use by around 2010.

Routing in delay-tolerant networking concerns itself with the ability to transport, or route, data from a source to a destination, which is a fundamental ability all communication networks must have. Delay- and disruption-tolerant networks (DTNs) are characterized by their lack of connectivity, resulting in a lack of instantaneous end-to-end paths. In these challenging environments, popular ad hoc routing protocols such as AODV and DSR fail to establish routes. This is due to these protocols trying to first establish a complete route and then, after the route has been established, forward the actual data. However, when instantaneous end-to-end paths are difficult or impossible to establish, routing protocols must take to a "store and forward" approach, where data is incrementally moved and stored throughout the network in hopes that it will eventually reach its destination. A common technique used to maximize the probability of a message being successfully transferred is to replicate many copies of the message in hopes that one will succeed in reaching its destination.

The history of delay-tolerant networking examines the bulk of the technologies that began the field that is known today as delay-tolerant networking. Research began as projects under United States government grants relating to the necessity of networking technologies that can sustain the significant delays and packet corruption of space travel. Initially, these projects looked only short-range communication between crewed missions to the moon and back, but the field quickly expanded into an entire sub-field of DTNs that created the technological advances to allow for the Interplanetary Internet.

A data mule is a vehicle that physically carries a computer with storage between remote locations to effectively create a data communication link. A data mule is a special case of a sneakernet, where the data is automatically loaded and unloaded when the data mule arrives at its terminal locations. Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN) can use data mules to exchange data among computers that do not have access to the TCP/IP-based Internet.

IEEE 802.11s is a wireless local area network (WLAN) standard and an IEEE 802.11 amendment for mesh networking, defining how wireless devices can interconnect to create a wireless LAN mesh network, which may be used for relatively fixed topologies and wireless ad hoc networks. The IEEE 802.11s task group drew upon volunteers from university and industry to provide specifications and possible design solutions for wireless mesh networking. As a standard, the document was iterated and revised many times prior to finalization.

Space Internetworking Center (SPICE) (Greek: Κέντρο Διαστημικής Διαδικτύωσης) in Xanthi, Greece, was founded in September 2010, having acquired funding from FP-7 Research Potential programme (FP7-REGPOT-2010-1, Grant Agreement No 264226). The center currently is directed by Prof. Vassilis Tsaoussidis and employs 27 staff members. It is hosted by the Democritus University of Thrace. The center has built an alliance with major institutions such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, NASA, Aalto University, the European Space Agency, and the University of Cambridge.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chai Keong Toh</span> Singaporean computer scientist

Chai Keong Toh is a Singaporean computer scientist, engineer, industry director, former VP/CTO and university professor. He is currently a Senior Fellow at the University of California Berkeley, USA. He was formerly Assistant Chief Executive of Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) Singapore. He has performed research on wireless ad hoc networks, mobile computing, Internet Protocols, and multimedia for over two decades. Toh's current research is focused on Internet-of-Things (IoT), architectures, platforms, and applications behind the development of smart cities.

Opportunistic mobile social networks are a form of mobile ad hoc networks that exploit the human social characteristics, such as similarities, daily routines, mobility patterns, and interests to perform the message routing and data sharing. In such networks, the users with mobile devices are able to form on-the-fly social networks to communicate with each other and share data objects.

Adrian Perrig is a Swiss computer science researcher and professor at ETH Zurich, leading the Network Security research group. His research focuses on networking and systems security, and specifically on the design of a secure next-generation internet architecture.

References

  1. ↑ A Delay-Tolerant Network Architecture for Challenged Internets, K. Fall, SIGCOMM, August 2003.
  2. ↑ Perkins, C.; Royer, E. (1999), "Ad hoc on-demand distance vector routing", The Second IEEE Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications
  3. ↑ Johnson, D.; Maltz, D. (1996), "Dynamic source routing in ad hoc wireless networks", Mobile Computing, Kluwer Academic, pp. 153–181
  4. ↑ John Burgess, Brian Gallagher, David Jensen, and Brian Neil Levine. MaxProp: Routing for vehicle-based disruption-tolerant networks. In Proc. IEEE INFOCOM, April 2006.
  5. ↑ Philo Juang; Hidekazu Oki; Yong Wang; Margaret Martonosi; Li Shiuan Peh; Daniel Rubenstein (2002). "Energy-efficient computing for wildlife tracking: Design tradeoffs and early experiences with ZebraNet". Proceedings of the 10th international conference on Architectural support for programming languages and operating systems. pp. 96–107. doi:10.1145/605397.605408. ISBN   978-1-58113-574-9. S2CID   1078542.
  6. ↑ Chaintreau, Augustin; Hui, Pan; Crowcroft, Jon; Diot, Christophe; Gass, Richard; Scott, James (2007). "Impact of human mobility on opportunistic forwarding algorithms". IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing. 6 (6): 606–620. doi:10.1109/TMC.2007.1060. S2CID   206745317.
  7. ↑ Vahdat, Amin; Becker, David (2000), "Epidemic routing for partially connected ad hoc networks", Technical Report CS-2000-06, Duke University
  8. ↑ CCSDS Bundle Protocol Specification (PDF). Washington, D.C.: CCSDS. 2015.
  9. ↑ Bucur, Doina; Iacca, Giovanni; Squillero, Giovanni; Tonda, Alberto (2015). "Black Holes and Revelations: Using Evolutionary Algorithms to Uncover Vulnerabilities in Disruption-Tolerant Networks". In Mora, Antonio M.; Squillero, Giovanni (eds.). Applications of Evolutionary Computation. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 9028. Springer International Publishing. pp. 29–41. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-16549-3_3. hdl: 11572/196441 . ISBN   978-3-319-16549-3.
  10. ↑ Bucur, Doina; Iacca, Giovanni (2017-09-01). "Improved search methods for assessing Delay-Tolerant Networks vulnerability to colluding strong heterogeneous attacks". Expert Systems with Applications. 80: 311–322. doi:10.1016/j.eswa.2017.03.035. hdl: 11572/196740 . ISSN   0957-4174. S2CID   37476103.
  11. ↑ Kate, Aniket; Zaverucha, Greg; Hengartner, Urs (2007). "Anonymity and security in delay tolerant networks". 3rd International Conference on Security and Privacy in Communication Networks (SecureComm 2007). CiteSeerX   10.1.1.71.8314 .
  12. ↑ Farrell, S.; Cahill, V. (2006-07-17). "Security Considerations in Space and Delay Tolerant Networks". 2nd IEEE International Conference on Space Mission Challenges for Information Technology (SMC-IT'06). pp. 8 pp.–38. doi:10.1109/SMC-IT.2006.66. ISBN   0-7695-2644-6. S2CID   2191529.
  13. ↑ DICTATE: DIstributed CerTification Authority with probabilisTic frEshness for Ad Hoc Networks
  14. ↑ "Practical security for disconnected nodes" Seth, A. Keshav, S. 1st IEEE ICNP Workshop on Secure Network Protocols (NPSec), 2005.
  15. ↑ MobiRate: Making Mobile Raters Stick to their Word. ACM Ubicomp 2008
  16. ↑ Fall, Kevin; Birrane, Edward; Burleigh, Scott (28 October 2020). "Bundle Protocol Version 7". Ietf Datatracker. Retrieved 2020-10-29.
  17. ↑ Use of the Delay-Tolerant Networking Bundle Protocol from Space Archived 2008-05-13 at the Wayback Machine , L. Wood et al., Conference paper IAC-08-B2.3.10, 59th International Astronautical Congress, Glasgow, September 2008.
  18. ↑ UK-DMC satellite first to transfer sensor data from space using 'bundle' protocol Archived 2012-04-26 at the Wayback Machine , press release, Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd, 11 September 2008.
  19. ↑ CLEO Orbital Internet earns Time Magazine award Archived 2008-12-07 at the Wayback Machine , Robin Wolstenholme, Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd space blog, 14 November 2008.
  20. ↑ A Better Network for Outer Space Archived 2012-03-31 at the Wayback Machine , Brittany Sauser, MIT Technology Review, 27 October 2008.
  21. ↑ NASA Successfully Tests First Deep Space Internet Archived 2010-11-24 at the Wayback Machine , NASA press release 08-298, 18 November 2008.
  22. ↑ Jenkins, Andrew; Kuzminsky, Sebastian; Gifford, Kevin K.; Holbrook, Mark; Nichols, Kelvin; Pitts, Lee. (2010). "Delay/Disruption-Tolerant Networking: Flight Test Results from the International Space Station." Archived 2011-09-02 at the Wayback Machine IEEE Aerospace Conference.
  23. ↑ Gifford, Kevin K.; Jenkins, Andrew; Holbrook, Mark; Kuzminsky, Sebastian; Nichols, Kelvin; Pitts, Lee. (2010). "DTN Implementation and Utilization Options on the International Space Station." Archived 2011-09-02 at the Wayback Machine American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.]
  24. ↑ The Automation Group at BioServe Space Technologies University of Colorado, Boulder.
  25. ↑ "NASA, ESA Use Experimental Interplanetary Internet to Test Robot from International Space Station". 7 April 2015.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.