Ferry access points and sticky transfers: Improving communication in ferry-assisted DTNs

Message ferries (MF) have been proposed as special nodes to improve communication in sparse, intermittent networks, such as delay-and disruption-tolerant networks (DTNs) by providing non-random message transfer opportunities to participating nodes. However, considering the mobility of nodes and the speed of the ferry, merely ensuring non-random encounters with hosts and the ferry do not guarantee optimal performance as the contact duration may not be enough to ensure adequate message transfers. The end-to-end performance could suffer significantly if message sizes are large. To address this issue, we present two methods that improve the performance of ferry-assisted DTNs: ferry access points (FAPs) and sticky transfers. FAPs supplement a ferry-assisted DTN with rendezvous points that increase the contact opportunities between mobile nodes and the ferry. Sticky transfers, upon mutual agreement, allow two encountered nodes to remain within transmission range of each other until they are able to complete necessary message transfers. This improves the number of successfully forwarded messages by allowing more messages to be transferred during the contact duration. Sticky transfers inherently reduce message transfer aborts. Our simulation results demonstrate that particular FAP placements improve the delivery ratio by as much as 25% for sparse networks and reduce the delay by as much as 40% for relatively dense networks. Sticky transfers on top of FAP-based DTNs achieved 100% delivery ratio for most situations, except in the case of highly-loaded, dense networks. Additionally, using sticky transfers resulted in lower delays by as much as 65% compared to non-sticky transfer cases.

[1]  Vinton G. Cerf,et al.  Delay-tolerant networking: an approach to interplanetary Internet , 2003, IEEE Commun. Mag..

[2]  Raj Jain,et al.  A survey of the research on future internet architectures , 2011, IEEE Communications Magazine.

[3]  Mostafa H. Ammar,et al.  Ferry replacement protocols in sparse MANET message ferrying systems , 2005, IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference, 2005.

[4]  Hari Balakrishnan,et al.  A measurement study of vehicular internet access using in situ Wi-Fi networks , 2006, MobiCom '06.

[5]  Kevin R. Fall,et al.  A delay-tolerant network architecture for challenged internets , 2003, SIGCOMM '03.

[6]  Jörg Ott,et al.  The ONE simulator for DTN protocol evaluation , 2009, SimuTools.

[7]  Ellen W. Zegura,et al.  Message ferry route design for sparse ad hoc networks with mobile nodes , 2006, MobiHoc '06.

[8]  Mostafa H. Ammar,et al.  Message ferrying: proactive routing in highly-partitioned wireless ad hoc networks , 2003, The Ninth IEEE Workshop on Future Trends of Distributed Computing Systems, 2003. FTDCS 2003. Proceedings..

[9]  Ellen W. Zegura,et al.  A message ferrying approach for data delivery in sparse mobile ad hoc networks , 2004, MobiHoc '04.

[10]  Ellen W. Zegura,et al.  Controlling the mobility of multiple data transport ferries in a delay-tolerant network , 2005, Proceedings IEEE 24th Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies..

[11]  Arun Venkataramani,et al.  Web search from a bus , 2007, CHANTS '07.

[12]  Ahmad Al Hanbali,et al.  Delay and resource analysis in MANETs in presence of throwboxes , 2007, Perform. Evaluation.

[13]  Elizabeth M. Belding-Royer,et al.  A review of current routing protocols for ad hoc mobile wireless networks , 1999, IEEE Wirel. Commun..

[14]  Donald F. Towsley,et al.  Relays, base stations, and meshes: enhancing mobile networks with infrastructure , 2008, MobiCom '08.

[15]  Amin Vahdat,et al.  Epidemic Routing for Partially-Connected Ad Hoc Networks , 2009 .

[16]  Shigeki Yamada,et al.  Using Ferry Access Points to Improve the Performance of Message Ferrying in Delay-Tolerant Networks , 2011 .

[17]  D.J. Goodman,et al.  INFOSTATIONS: a new system model for data and messaging services , 1997, 1997 IEEE 47th Vehicular Technology Conference. Technology in Motion.

[18]  Ellen W. Zegura,et al.  Capacity Enhancement using Throwboxes in DTNs , 2006, 2006 IEEE International Conference on Mobile Ad Hoc and Sensor Systems.

[19]  Cauligi S. Raghavendra,et al.  Spray and wait: an efficient routing scheme for intermittently connected mobile networks , 2005, WDTN '05.