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, technical specifications, 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 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?

Contributing to the Wiki

If you want to add or edit content on this Wiki site, first log in and/or create an account, then send email to the dtn-interest administrators requesting edit permission, making sure to include your wiki account name. Once you have been granted edit permission, you are listed as a member of the wiki developer group.

Mailing Lists

DTNRG is an IRTF open research group. There are several mailing lists, depending on your interests, that you can subscribe to:

• dtn-interest: announcements and general discussions about DTNs

• dtn-users: software development and support

• dtn-security: discussions on security issues

Posting is restricted to subscribed members, determined by the email address you are sending from (i.e., if you post to the list from an email address that is different from the one you are subscribed to, your post will be dropped silently).

Current Efforts

• dtnbone: An effort is underway to establish a network of DTN (mainly DTN2 and ION) nodes on the terrestrial internet for interoperability testing, application deployment, and the develop of network management, naming, and routing conventions.

Virtual and Physical Meetings

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 post to the mailing lists indicating what you would like to do.

Upcoming and Previous Events