Disruption-tolerant networking: A comprehensive survey on recent developments and persisting challenges

摘要: Nowadays, wireless networks are witnessing several deployments in various extreme environments where they suffer from different levels of link disruptions depending on the severity of the operating conditions. In all cases, their operation requirements are differently altered and their performance is negatively affected rendering them heterogeneous by nature. In the open literature, these networks are known as Intermittently Connected Networks (ICNs). The existing Internet protocols fail to operate properly in the context of ICNs, thus raising a variety of new challenging problems that are attracting the attention of the networking research community. Delay-/Disruption-Tolerant Networking emerged as a highly active area of research where networking experts compete in addressing the various ICN problems. Over time, unicast routing, one of the architectural key components common to all ICNs, became an almost …