Subject: Re: IETF Challenges - DTN and the Internet of Stuff

From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 3 Mar 2013 05:25:51 +0000

Stephen Farrell wrote:

> <dtnrg-co-chair-hat> 
 
> Cool. As it happens, DTNRG folks agreed last summer to start 
> work on a bis version of the bundle protocol (RFC5050), and 
> now that we've gotten a few other things out of the way, we 
> should be starting in on that real soon now. So if that 
> does happen, then I'd say now's a great time to get involved 
> in DTN stuff.

Revising the bundle protocol, a protocol that:
- has no concept of ensuring end-to-end reliability, yet is intended to be used in challenging environments which affect reliability
- insists on having synchronised real-time system clocks and can't tolerate offsets between them, so clock drift kills communications

would be great ideas - except such revisions addressing those significant showstopper problems have been proposed before in that research group, and have not progressed beyond drafts over the course of five years under the co-chairs' stewardship due to complacency, lack of interest, and lack of understanding of the problems. Coupled with repeated denial that these are, in fact, problems.

(The size and complexity of bundle protocol implementations prevents their use in the embedded system arena, as well.)

A great time to get involved in DTN bundle protocol work was when it was getting funded, with the promise of it solving the communication problems it proved unable to address. That time has passed.

(some technical background: A Bundle of Problems, IEEE Aerospace 2009. See:
http://personal.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/L.Wood/publications/index.html#bundle-problems
http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/AERO.2009.4839384  )

Lloyd Wood
http://sat-net.com/L.Wood/dtn