[Nets-seminars] Seminar tomorrow 27th Feb GS/302

[Richard G. Clegg]

Tomorrow we have Ioannis Psaras from Surrey talking about Delay Tolerant 
Networks.

Title: DTN RoadTax: Roadmap and Taxonomy for DTN Research
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Abstract:
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DTN research is the ultimate hot topic for networking research nowadays. 
Researchers are struggling to identify ways to network places and 
devices that currently do not have the option of "going" online. In 
contrast to conventional Internet communications, where connectivity is 
ubiquitous, in DTNs end-to-end connectivity is the exception rather than 
the rule. Therefore, DTN nodes need to exploit store-carry-and-forward 
techniques in order to deliver messages to their destination.

Originally, DTN research began from the InterPlaNetary (IPN) Internet, 
but later on researchers identified more environments where 
Delay-/Disruption-Tolerant Networking may be applicable. Some examples, 
are VANETs, underwater communications, social networks, providing 
connectivity to developing countries, just to name a few.

Although the "killer app" for DTNs is not yet known, some of the 
potential applications of interest may very well be e-mail, web, 
telemetry and telecomand, road traffic management, health monitoring 
etc. Clearly, architecture and application heterogeneity pose huge 
difficulties for the design of algorithms and protocols for DTN 
environments. The DTN research community, however, has not considered 
this heterogeneity yet, leading to research proposals that may only 
partly be applicable to DTN environments.

In this talk, we'll try to identify what is still missing in order to 
make DTN research applicable in real terms. In our opinion, the roadmap 
to success is a "taxonomization" of DTN environments/architectures, 
followed by the identification of the corresponding challenges and the 
definition of the appropriate metrics, topologies and evaluation 
methodologies. We'll attempt to provide initial insights on that 
direction by defining service targets and system constraints for the 
whole spectrum of potential DTN deployments. Finally, we'll point out 
avenues for future research.


-- 
Richard G. Clegg,
Dept of Elec. Eng.,
University College London
http://www.richardclegg.org/