What is DTNRG?
The Delay-Tolerant Networking Research Group (DTNRG) is a research group chartered as part of the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF). Members of DTNRG are concerned with how to address the architectural and protocol design principles arising from the need to provide interoperable communications with and among extreme and performance-challenged environments where continuous end-to-end connectivity cannot be assumed. Said another way, we are concerned with interconnecting highly heterogeneous networks together even if end-to-end connectivity may never be available. Examples of such environments include spacecraft, military/tactical, some forms of disaster response, underwater, and some forms of ad-hoc sensor/actuator networks. It may also include Internet connectivity in places where performance may suffer such as developing parts of the world.
DTNRG members research aspects of delay-tolerant networking in a number of ways including academic publications, specification/standard development, several active mailing lists, and code (reference implementation) development. DTNRG holds semi-regular teleconferences for software developers and occasional face-to-face public meetings. The public meetings usually occur in conjunction with every other IETF meeting. The current co-chairs for DTNRG are Kevin Fall (Intel Research) and Stephen Farrell (Trinity College, Dublin). Stephen has recently written a book on DTN.
Several of the members of DTNRG participate in the (highly-related) DARPA Disruption Tolerant Networking program.
How Can I Participate?
If you want to add or edit content on this Wiki site, first log in and create an account, then send email to Michael Demmer requesting edit permission, making sure to include your wiki account name. Once Michael has granted you edit permission, you are listed as a member of the wiki developer group.
DTNRG is an IRTF open research group. DTNRG has a dtn-interest mailing list which you should join. Announcements and discussions take place there. Posting is restricted to members (which is determined by the sending e-mail address). So, if you try to post to the list from an e-mail address that is different from the one you subscribed with, your posting will be dropped silently. If you are working on software development and support, you should also subscribe to dtn-users. A list devoted to security issues is available as dtn-security.
In addition, the folks working on the implementation meet from time-to-time (about every other month in person and weekly on the phone). If you have resources to help with this effort (and are willing to travel), please send mail to the mailing list indicating what you would like to do.