Routing Strategies for Delay-Tolerant Networks

Delay-Tolerant Networks (DTNs) have the potential to interconnect devices in regions that current networking technology cannot reach. The idea is that an end-to-end connection may never be present. To make communication possible, intermediate nodes take custody of the data being transferred and forward it as the opportunity arises. Both links and nodes may be inherently unreliable and disconnections may be long-lived. To realize the DTN vision, routes must be found over multiple unreliable, intermittently-connected hops. Many researchers have investigated this fundamental challenge, particularly over the past five years. This paper surveys the area of routing in delay-tolerant networks and presents a system for classifying the proposed routing strategies.