DTN Research Group V. Cerf INTERNET-DRAFT Google/Jet Propulsion Laboratory <draft-irtf-dtnrg-arch-05.txt> S. Burleigh March 2006 A. Hooke Expires September 2006 L. Torgerson NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory R. Durst K. Scott The MITRE Corporation K. Fall Intel Corporation H. Weiss SPARTA, Inc. Delay-Tolerant Network Architecture Status of this Memo By submitting this Internet-Draft, each author represents that any applicable patent or other IPR claims of which he or she is aware have been or will be disclosed, and any of which he or she becomes aware will be disclosed, in accordance with Section 6 of BCP 79. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet- Drafts. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt. The list of Internet- Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html. This document represents the consensus of all the active contributors of the IRTF's Delay Tolerant Networking Research Group (DTNRG). Please see http://www.dtnrg.org. Abstract This document describes an architecture for delay-tolerant and disruption-tolerant networks, and is an evolution of the architecture originally designed for the Interplanetary Internet, a communication system envisioned to provide Internet-like services across interplanetary distances in support of deep space exploration. This document describes an architecture that addresses a variety of problems with internetworks having operational and performance characteristics that make conventional (Internet-like) networking approaches either unworkable or impractical. We define a message- oriented overlay that exists above the transport (or other) layers of the networks it interconnects. The document presents a motivation for the architecture, an architectural overview, review of state management required for its operation, and a discussion of application design issues. Internet Draft draft-irtf-dtnrg-arch-05.txt March 2006 Table of Contents Status of this Memo................................................1 Abstract...........................................................1 Table of Contents..................................................2 1 Introduction.................................................4 2 Why an Architecture for Delay-Tolerant Networking?...........5 3 DTN Architectural Description................................6 3.1 Virtual Message Switching using Store-and-Forward Operation...............................................6 3.2 Nodes...................................................7 3.3 Endpoint Identifiers (EIDs) and Registrations...........7 3.4 Naming of Groups........................................9 3.5 Priority Classes.......................................10 3.6 Postal-Style Delivery Options and Administrative Records11 3.7 Primary Bundle Fields..................................13 3.8 Routing and Forwarding.................................14 3.9 Fragmentation and Reassembly...........................16 3.10 Reliability and Custody Transfer.......................17 3.11 DTN Support for Proxies and Application Layer Gateways.18 3.12 Time Stamps and Time Synchronization...................19 3.13 Congestion and Flow Control at the Bundle Layer........19 3.14 Security...............................................20 4 State Management Considerations.............................22 4.1 Application Registration State.........................22 4.2 Custody Transfer State.................................22 4.3 Bundle Routing and Forwarding State....................23 4.4 Security-Related State.................................23 4.5 Policy and Configuration State.........................24 5 Application Structuring Issues..............................24 6 Convergence Layer Considerations for Use of Underlying Protocols...................................................25 7 Summary.....................................................26 8 Security Considerations.....................................26 9 IANA Considerations.........................................26 10 Normative References........................................26 11 Informative References......................................26 Cerf, et al. Expires September 2006 [Page 2]
Internet Draft draft-irtf-dtnrg-arch-05.txt March 2006 Acknowledgments John Wroclawski, David Mills, Greg Miller, James P. G. Sterbenz, Joe Touch, Steven Low, Lloyd Wood, Robert Braden, Deborah Estrin, Stephen Farrell, Melissa Ho, Ting Liu, Mike Demmer, Jakob Ericsson, Susan Symington and Craig Partridge all contributed useful thoughts and criticisms to previous versions of this document. We are grateful for their time and participation. This work was performed in part under DOD Contract DAA-B07-00-CC201, DARPA AO H912; JPL Task Plan No. 80-5045, DARPA AO H870; and NASA Contract NAS7-1407. Release Notes draft-irtf-dtnrg-arch-00.txt, March 2003: -Revised model for delay tolerant network infrastructure security. -Introduced fragmentation and reassembly to the architecture. -Removed significant amounts of rationale and redundant text. Moved bundle transfer example(s) to separate draft(s). draft-irtf-dtnrg-arch-02.txt, July 2004: -Revised assumptions about reachability within DTN regions. -Added management endpoint identifiers for nodes. -Moved list of bundle header information to protocol spec document. draft-irtf-dtnrg-arch-03.txt, July 2005: -Revised regions to become URI schemes -Added discussion of multicast and anycast -Revised motivation/introduction section (2) and -Much of the security discussion has moved to the security draft -Updated terminology to match current bundle protocol specification draft-irtf-dtnrg-arch-04.txt, November 2005: -Further terminology updates and minor editing draft-irtf-dtnrg-arch-05.txt, March 2006: -Added consensus wording for new IRTF document process proposal Cerf, et al. Expires September 2006 [Page 3]
Internet Draft draft-irtf-dtnrg-arch-05.txt March 2006 1 Introduction This document describes an architecture for delay and disruption- tolerant interoperable networking (DTN). The architecture embraces the concepts of occasionally-connected networks that may suffer from frequent partitions and that may be comprised of more than one divergent set of protocols or protocol families. The basis for this architecture lies with that of the Interplanetary Internet, which focused primarily on the issue of deep space communication in high- delay environments. We expect the DTN architecture described here to be utilized in various operational environments, including those subject to disruption and disconnection and those with high-delay; the case of deep space is one specialized example of these, and is being pursued as a specialization of this architecture (See http://www.ipnsig.org and [SB03] for more details). Other networks to which we believe this architecture applies include sensor-based networks using scheduled intermittent connectivity, terrestrial wireless networks that cannot ordinarily maintain end-to- end connectivity, satellite networks with moderate delays and periodic connectivity, and underwater acoustic networks with moderate delays and frequent interruptions due to environmental factors. A DTN tutorial [FW03], aimed at introducing DTN and the types of networks for which it is designed, is available to introduce new readers to the fundamental concepts and motivation. More technical descriptions may be found in [KF03], [JFP04], [JDPF05] and [WJMF05]. We define an end-to-end message-oriented overlay called the "bundle layer" that exists at a layer above the transport (or other) layers of the networks on which it is hosted and below applications. Devices implementing the bundle layer are called DTN nodes. The bundle layer forms an overlay that employs persistent storage to help combat network interruption. It includes a hop-by-hop transfer of reliable delivery responsibility and optional end-to-end acknowledgement. It also includes a number of diagnostic and management features. For interoperability, it uses a flexible naming scheme (based on Uniform Resource Identifiers [RFC3986]) capable of encapsulating different naming and addressing schemes in the same overall naming syntax. It also has a basic security model, optionally enabled, aimed at protecting infrastructure from unauthorized use. The bundle layer provides functionality similar to the internet layer of gateways described in the original ARPANET/Internet designs [CK74]. It differs from ARPANET gateways, however, because it is layer-agnostic and is focused on virtual message forwarding rather than packet switching. However, both generally provide interoperability between underlying protocols specific to one environment and those protocols specific to another, and both provide a store-and-forward forwarding service (with the bundle layer employing persistent storage for its store and forward function). In a sense, the DTN architecture provides a common method for interconnecting heterogeneous gateways or proxies that employ store- Cerf, et al. Expires September 2006 [Page 4]
Internet Draft draft-irtf-dtnrg-arch-05.txt March 2006 and-forward message routing to overcome communication disruptions. It provides services similar to electronic mail, but with enhanced naming, routing, and security capabilities. Nodes unable to support the full capabilities required by this architecture may be supported by application layer proxies acting as DTN applications. 2 Why an Architecture for Delay-Tolerant Networking? Our motivations for pursuing an architecture for delay tolerant networking stems from several factors. These factors are summarized below; much more detail on their rationale can be explored in [SB03], [KF03], and [DFS02]. The existing Internet protocols do not work well for some environments, due to some fundamental assumptions built into the Internet architecture: - that an end-to-end path between source and destination exists for the duration of a communication session - (for reliable communication) that retransmissions based on timely and stable feedback from data receivers is an effective means for repairing errors - that end-to-end loss is relatively small - that all routers and end stations support the TCP/IP protocols - that applications need not worry about communication performance - that endpoint-based security mechanisms are sufficient for meeting most security concerns - that packet switching is the most appropriate abstraction for interoperability and performance - that selecting a single route between sender and receiver is sufficient for achieving acceptable communication performance The DTN architecture is conceived to relax most of these assumptions, based on a number of design principles that are summarized here (and further discussed in [KF03]): - use variable-length (possibly long) messages (not streams or limited-sized packets) as the communication abstraction to help enhance the ability of the network to make good scheduling/path selection decisions when possible - use a naming syntax that supports a wide range of naming and addressing conventions to enhance interoperability - use storage within the network to support store-and-forward operation over multiple paths, and over potentially long timescales (i.e. to support operation in environments where many and/or no end-to-end paths may ever exist); do not require end-to- end reliability - provide security mechanisms that protect the infrastructure from unauthorized use by discarding traffic as quickly as possible - provide coarse-grained classes of service, delivery options, time stamps and an expression of the useful life for data to further allow the network to better serve the needs of applications Cerf, et al. Expires September 2006 [Page 5]
Internet Draft draft-irtf-dtnrg-arch-05.txt March 2006 In addition to the principles guiding the design of the bundle layer itself, its use is also guided by a few application design principles: - applications should minimize the number of round-trip exchanges - applications should cope with restarts after failure while network transactions remain pending These issues are discussed in further detail in Section 5. 3 DTN Architectural Description The previous section summarized the design principles that guide the definition of the DTN architecture. This section presents a description of the major features of the architecture resulting from design decisions guided by the aforementioned design principles. 3.1 Virtual Message Switching using Store-and-Forward Operation A DTN-enabled application sends messages, also called Application Data Units or ADUs [CT90] of arbitrary length, subject to any implementation limitations. The relative order of messages might not be preserved. Messages are transformed into protocol data units called "bundles" that contain ADUs and other information used to deliver bundles to their destination(s). Messages are typically sent by and delivered to applications in complete units; bundles may be split up ("fragmented") into multiple constituent bundles (also called "fragments" or "bundle fragments") during transmission. Bundle sources and destinations are identified by (variable-length) Endpoint Identifiers (EIDs, described below), which identify the original sender and final destination(s) of bundles, respectively. Bundles also contain a "report-to" EID used when special operations are requested to direct diagnostic output to an arbitrary entity (e.g., other than the source). While IP networks are based on "store-and-forward" operation, there is an assumption that the "storing" will not persist for more than a modest amount of time, on the order of the queuing and transmission delay. In contrast, the DTN architecture does not expect that network links are always available or reliable, and instead expects that nodes may choose to store messages for some time. We anticipate that most DTN nodes will use some form of persistent storage for this -- disk, flash memory, etc., and that stored messages will survive system restarts. A message-oriented abstraction provides bundle layer routing with a- priori knowledge of the size and performance requirements of requested data transfers. When there is a significant amount of queuing that can occur in the network (as is the case in the DTN version of store-and-forward), the advantage provided by knowing this information may be significant for making scheduling and path selection decisions [JFP04]. An alternative abstraction (i.e. of Cerf, et al. Expires September 2006 [Page 6]
Internet Draft draft-irtf-dtnrg-arch-05.txt March 2006 stream-based delivery) would make such scheduling much more difficult. Although packets provide some of the same benefits as messages, larger aggregates provide a way for the network to apply scheduling and buffer management to entire units of data that are useful to applications. An essential element of the message-based style of operation for networking is that messages have a place to wait in a queue until a communication opportunity ("contact") is available. This highlights the following assumptions: 1. that storage is available and well-distributed throughout the network 2. that storage is sufficiently persistent and robust to store messages until forwarding can occur, and 3. (implicitly) that this 'store-and-forward' model is a better choice than attempting to effect continuous connectivity or other alternatives For a network to effectively support the DTN architecture, these assumptions must be considered and must be found to hold. 3.2 Nodes A DTN node (or simply "node" in this document) is an engine for sending and receiving bundles-- an implementation of the bundle layer. Applications utilize DTN nodes to send or receive messages carried in bundles (or act as report-to destinations for diagnostic information carried in bundles). Nodes are identified by one or more Endpoint Identifiers (EIDs). 3.3 Endpoint Identifiers (EIDs) and Registrations An Endpoint Identifier (EID) is a name, using the general syntax of URIs (see below), that refers to a set of DTN nodes. Such a set is called a "DTN endpoint." A node is able to determine from an EID the corresponding endpoint's "minimum reception group" (MRG). The MRG of an endpoint is the set of nodes "in" the endpoint to which a bundle must be delivered in order to complete a data transfer. In particular, the MRG of an endpoint may refer to one node (unicast), one of a group of nodes (anycast), or all of a group of nodes (multicast and broadcast). A single node may be in the MRG of multiple endpoints and an endpoint may have an MRG with cardinality greater than one (e.g., for anycast and multicast delivery, see below). Each node is also required to have at least one EID that uniquely identifies it. Applications send messages destined for an EID, and they may arrange for bundles sent to a particular EID to be delivered to them. Depending on the construction of the EID being used (see below), there may be a provision for wildcarding some portion of an EID, which is often useful for diagnostic and routing purposes. Cerf, et al. Expires September 2006 [Page 7]
Internet Draft draft-irtf-dtnrg-arch-05.txt March 2006 An application's desire to receive traffic destined for a particular EID is called a "registration," and in general is maintained persistently by a DTN node. This allows application registration information to survive application and operating system restarts. An application's attempt to establish a registration is not guaranteed to succeed. For example, an application could request to register itself as a member of an endpoint by specifying an Endpoint ID that is uninterpretable or unavailable to the DTN node servicing the request. Such requests are likely to fail. 3.3.1 URI Schemes Each Endpoint ID is expressed syntactically as a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) [RFC3986]. The URI syntax has been designed as a way to express names or addresses for a wide range of purposes, and is therefore useful for constructing DTN names. In URI terminology, each URI begins with a scheme name. The scheme name is an element of the set of globally-managed scheme names maintained by IANA [ISCHEMES]. Lexically following the scheme name in a URI is a series of characters constrained by the syntax defined by the scheme. This portion of the URI is called the scheme-specific part (SSP), and can be quite general. (See, as one example, the URI scheme for SNMP [RFC4088]). Note that scheme-specific syntactical and semantic restrictions may be more constraining than the basic rules of RFC 3986. Section 3.1 of RFC 3986 provides guidance on the syntax of scheme names. URI schemes are a key concept in the DTN architecture, and evolved from an earlier concept called regions, which were tied more closely to assumptions of the network topology. Using URIs, significant flexibility is attained in the structuring of EIDs. They might, for example, be constructed based on DNS names, or might look like "expressions of interest" or forms of database-like queries as in a directed diffusion-routed network [IGE00] or in intentional naming [WSBL99]. As names, EIDs are not required to be related to routing or topological organization. Such a relationship is not prohibited, however, and in some environments using EIDs this way may be advantageous. A single EID may refer to more than one DTN node, as suggested above. It is the responsibility of a scheme designer to define how to interpret the SSP of an EID so as to determine whether it refers to a unicast, multicast or anycast set of nodes. See Section 3.4 for more details. URIs are constructed based on rules specified in RFC 3986, using the US-ASCII character set. However, note this excerpt from RFC 3986, section 1.2.1, on dealing with characters that cannot be represented Cerf, et al. Expires September 2006 [Page 8]
Internet Draft draft-irtf-dtnrg-arch-05.txt March 2006 by US-ASCII: "Percent-encoded octets (Section 2.1) may be used within a URI to represent characters outside the range of the US- ASCII coded character set if this representation is allowed by the scheme or by the protocol element in which the URI is referenced. Such a definition should specify the character encoding used to map those characters to octets prior to being percent-encoded for the URI." 3.3.2 Late Binding Binding means interpreting the SSP of an EID for the purpose of carrying an associated message to a recipient over some underlying protocol. For example, binding might require mapping an EID to a lower-layer address or an alternate EID in a fashion similar to DNS name-to-address mappings in the Internet. "Late binding" means that this interpretation may take place relatively late in the delivery process of a message. Late binding is in contrast with typical Internet communication sessions in which a DNS resolution takes place prior to data exchange at the IP layer. Such a circumstance would be considered "early binding" because the name-to-address translation is performed prior to data being sent into the network. In a frequently-disconnected network, late binding may be advantageous because the transit time of a message may exceed the validity time of a binding. Furthermore, use of name-based routing with late binding may reduce the amount of administrative (mapping) information that must propagate through the network, and may also limit the scope of mapping synchronization requirements to a local topological neighborhood of its origin. 3.4 Naming of Groups As mentioned above, an EID may refer to one node or a group of DTN nodes. When referring to a group of nodes, the delivery semantics may be of either the anycast or multicast variety (broadcast is considered to be of the multicast variety). For anycast group delivery, a message is delivered to one node among a group of potentially many nodes, and for multicast delivery it is intended to be delivered to all of them, subject to the normal DTN quality of service and maximum useful lifetime semantics. Group join operations are initiated at receivers. Multicast group delivery in a DTN presents an unfamiliar issue with respect to group membership. In relatively low-delay networks, such as the Internet, nodes may be considered to be part of the group if they have expressed interest to join it "recently." In a DTN, however, nodes may wish to receive data sent to a group during an interval of time earlier than when they are actually able to receive it [ZAZ05]. More precisely, an application expresses its desire to receive data sent to EID e at time t. Prior to this, during the interval [t0, t1], t > t1, data may have been generated for group e. For the application to receive any of this data, the data must be Cerf, et al. Expires September 2006 [Page 9]
Internet Draft draft-irtf-dtnrg-arch-05.txt March 2006 available a potentially long time after senders have ceased sending to the group. Thus, the data may need to be stored within the network in order to support temporal group semantics of this kind. How to design and implement this remains a research issue, as it is likely to be at least as hard as problems related to reliable multicast. 3.5 Priority Classes The DTN architecture offers *relative* measures of priority (low, medium, high) for delivering traffic. These priorities differentiate traffic based upon an application's desire to affect the delivery urgency for messages. The (U.S. or similar) Postal Service provides a strong metaphor for the priority classes offered by the DTN architecture. Traffic is generally not interactive and is often one-way. There are generally no strong guarantees of timely delivery, yet there are some forms of class of service, reliability, and security. We have currently defined three relative priority classes. These priority classes typically imply some relative scheduling prioritization among bundles in queue at a sender: - Bulk - Bulk bundles are shipped on a "least effort" basis. No bundles of this class will be shipped until all bundles of other classes bound for the same destination and originating from the same source have been shipped. - Normal - Normal class bundles are shipped prior to any bulk class bundles and are otherwise the same as bulk bundles. - Expedited - Expedited bundles, in general, are shipped prior to bundles of other classes and are otherwise the same. Applications specify their requested priority class and data lifetime (see below) for each message they send. This information, coupled with policy applied at DTN nodes that forward messages and routing algorithms in use, affects the overall likelihood and timeliness of message delivery. The priority class of a message is only required to relate to other messages from the same source. This means that a high priority message from one source may not be delivered faster (or with some other superior quality of service) than a medium priority message from a different source. It does mean that a high priority message from one source will be handled preferentially to a lower priority message sent from the same source. Depending on a particular DTN node's forwarding/scheduling policy, priority may or may not be enforced across different sources. That is, in some DTN nodes, expedited bundles might always be sent prior to any bulk bundles, irrespective of source. Many variations are possible. Cerf, et al. Expires September 2006 [Page 10]
Internet Draft draft-irtf-dtnrg-arch-05.txt March 2006 3.6 Postal-Style Delivery Options and Administrative Records Continuing with the postal analogy of message delivery, the DTN architecture supports several delivery options that may be selected by an application when it requests the transmission of a message. In addition, the architecture defines two types of administrative records: "status reports" and "signals." These records are bundles that provide information about the delivery of other bundles, and are used in conjunction with the delivery options. 3.6.1 Delivery Options We have currently defined eight basic delivery options. Applications sending a message may request any combination of the following: - Custody Transfer Requested - requests a bundle be delivered with enhanced reliability using custody transfer procedures. A bundle will be transmitted by the bundle layer using reliable transfer protocols (if available), and the responsibility for reliable delivery of the bundle to its destination(s) may move among one or more "custodians" in the network. This capability is described in more detail in Section 3.10. - Source Node Custody Acceptance Required - requires the source DTN node to provide custody transfer for the message being sent. If custody transfer is not available at the source when this delivery option is requested, the requested transmission fails. This provides a means for applications to insist that the source DTN node take custody of the message. - Report when Bundle Received - requests a Bundle Reception Status Report be generated when the subject bundle arrives at a DTN node. - Report when Bundle Custody Accepted - requests a Custody Acceptance Status Report be generated when the subject bundle has been accepted using custody transfer. - Report when Bundle Forwarded - requests a Bundle Forwarding Status Report be generated when the subject bundle departs a DTN node that has forwarded it. - Report when Bundle Delivered - requests a Bundle Delivery Status Report be generated when the bundle reaches its intended recipient(s). This request is also known as "return-receipt." - Report when Bundle Deleted - requests a Bundle Deletion Status Report be generated when the subject bundle is deleted at a DTN node. - Report when Bundle Acknowledged by Application - requests an Acknowledgement Status Report be generated when the subject bundle is acknowledged by a receiving application. This only happens by action of the receiving application, and differs from the Bundle Cerf, et al. Expires September 2006 [Page 11]
Internet Draft draft-irtf-dtnrg-arch-05.txt March 2006 Delivery Status Report. It is intended for cases where the application may be acting as a form of application layer gateway and wishes to indicate the status of a protocol operation external to DTN back to the requesting source. If the security procedures defined in [DTNSEC] are also enabled, then three additional delivery options become available: - Confidentiality Required - requires a bundle's data be made secret from parties other than the source and the members of the destination EID - Authentication Required - requires all non-mutable fields in the headers of bundles (i.e., those which do not change as the bundle is forwarded) be made strongly verifiable (i.e. cryptographically strong). This protects several fields, including the source and destination EIDs and the bundle's data. - Error Detection Required - requires modifications to a bundle's non-mutable fields be made detectable with high probability at each destination 3.6.2 Bundle Status Reports and Custody Signals Bundle Status Reports (BSRs) provide information and diagnostic responses in DTN and correspond (approximately) to the ICMP protocol in IP [RFC792]. In ICMP, however, messages are returned to the source. In DTN, they are instead directed to the report-to EID, which might differ from the source's EID. BSRs are sent as bundles with a source EID set to one of the EIDs associated with the DTN node generating the BSR. In some cases, arrival of a single bundle or bundle fragment may elicit multiple BSRs (e.g., in the case where a bundle is replicated for multicast forwarding). Many of the BSRs are used in forming responses to the delivery options discussed in the previous sub-section. The following BSRs are currently defined (also see [BSPEC] for more details): - Bundle Reception - sent when a bundle arrives at a DTN node - Custody Acceptance - sent when a node has accepted custody of a bundle with the Custody Transfer Requested option set - Bundle Forwarded - sent when a bundle containing a Report when Bundle Forwarded option departs from a DTN node after having been forwarded. - Bundle Delivery - sent from a final recipient's (destination) node when a bundle containing a Report when Bundle Delivered option is consumed by an application Cerf, et al. Expires September 2006 [Page 12]
Internet Draft draft-irtf-dtnrg-arch-05.txt March 2006 - Bundle Deletion - sent from a DTN node when a bundle containing a Report when Bundle Deleted option is discarded. This can happen for several reasons, such as expiration - Acknowledged by application - sent from a DTN node when a bundle containing an Application Acknowledgment option has been processed by an application. This generally involves specific action on the receiving application's part In addition to the status reports, a signal is currently defined to indicate the status of a custody transfer. These are sent to the current-custodian EID contained in an arriving bundle: - Custody Signal - indicates that custody has been successfully transferred. This signal appears as a Boolean indicator, and may therefore indicate either a successful or a failed custody transfer attempt The BSRs must reference a received bundle. This is accomplished by a method for uniquely identifying bundles based on a transmission timestamp and sequence number discussed in Section 3.12. 3.7 Primary Bundle Fields The bundles carried between and among DTN nodes obey a standard bundle protocol specified in [BSPEC]. Here we provide an overview of most of the fields carried with every bundle. The protocol is designed with a mandatory primary header, an optional payload header (which contains the payload itself), and a set of optional extension headers. Headers may be cascaded in a way similar to IPv6. The following selected fields are all present in the primary header, and therefore are present for every bundle and fragment: - Creation Timestamp - a concatenation of the bundle's creation time and a monotonically increasing sequence number such that the creation timestamp is guaranteed to be unique for each bundle originating from the same source. The creation timestamp is based on the time-of-day an application requested a message to be sent (and a bundle containing the message was formed by the sender's DTN node). DTN nodes are assumed to have a basic time synchronization capability (see Section 3.11). - Lifespan - the time-of-day at which the message is no longer useful. If a bundle is stored in the network (including the source's DTN node) when its lifespan is reached, it may be discarded. The lifespan of a bundle is expressed as an offset relative to its creation time. - Class of Service Flags - indicates the delivery options and priority class for the bundle. Priority classes may be one of bulk, normal, or expedited. See Section 3.6.1. - Source EID - EID of the source (the first sender) Cerf, et al. Expires September 2006 [Page 13]
Internet Draft draft-irtf-dtnrg-arch-05.txt March 2006 - Destination EID - EID of the destination (the final intended recipient(s)) - Report-To Endpoint ID - an EID identifying where reports (return- receipt, route-tracing functions) should be sent. This may or may not identify the same node as the Source EID. - Custodian EID - EID of the current custodian of a bundle (if any) The payload header indicates information about the contained payload (e.g. its length) and, somewhat unusually, includes the payload itself. In addition to the fields found in the primary and payload headers, each bundle may have fields in the extension headers carried with each bundle. See [BSPEC] for additional details. 3.8 Routing and Forwarding The DTN architecture provides a framework for routing and forwarding at the bundle layer for unicast, anycast, and multicast messages. Because nodes in a DTN network might be interconnected using more than one type of underlying network technology, a DTN network is best described abstractly using a *multigraph* (a graph where vertices may be interconnected with more than one edge). Edges in this graph are, in general, time-varying with respect to their delay and capacity and directional because of the possibility of one-way connectivity. When an edges has zero capacity, it is considered to not be connected. Because edges in a DTN graph may have significant delay, it is important to distinguish where time is measured when expressing an edge's capacity or delay. We adopt the convention of expressing capacity and delay as functions of time where time is measured at the point where data is inserted into a network edge. For example, consider an edge having capacity C(t) and delay D(t) at time t. If B bits are placed in this edge at time t, they arrives at time t + D(t) + (1/C(t))*B. Because edges may vary between positive and zero capacity, it is possible to describe a period of time (interval) during which the capacity is strictly positive, and the delay and capacity can be considered to be constant [AF03]. This period of time is called a "contact." In addition, the product of the capacity and the interval is known as a contact's "volume." If contacts and their volumes are known ahead of time, intelligent routing and forwarding decisions can be made (optimally for small networks) [JPF04]. Optimally using a contact's volume, however, requires the ability to divide large messages into smaller routable units. This is provided by DTN fragmentation (see Section 3.9). When delivery paths through a DTN graph are lossy or contact intervals and volumes are not known precisely ahead of time, routing computations become especially challenging. How to handle these Cerf, et al. Expires September 2006 [Page 14]
Internet Draft draft-irtf-dtnrg-arch-05.txt March 2006 situations is an active area of work in the (emerging) research area of delay tolerant networking. 3.8.1 Types of Contacts Contacts typically fall into one of several categories, based largely on the predictability of their performance characteristics and whether some action is required to bring them into existence. To date, the following major types of contacts have been defined: Persistent Contacts Persistent contacts are always available (i.e., no connection- initiation action is required to instantiate a persistent contact). An 'always-on' Internet connection such as a DSL or Cable Modem connection would be representatives of this class. On-Demand Contacts On-Demand contacts require some action in order to instantiate, but then function as persistent contacts until terminated. A dial-up connection is an example of an On-Demand contact (at least, from the viewpoint of the dialer; it may be viewed as an Opportunistic Contact - below - from the viewpoint of the dial-up service provider). Intermittent - Scheduled Contacts A scheduled contact is an agreement to establish a contact at a particular time, for a particular duration. An example of a scheduled contact is a link with a low-earth orbiting satellite. A node's list of contacts with the satellite can be constructed from the satellite's schedule of view times, capacities and latencies. Note that for networks with substantial delays, the notion of the "particular time" is delay-dependent. For example, a single scheduled contact between Earth and Mars would not be at the same instant in each location, but would instead be offset by the (non- negligible) propagation delay. Intermittent - Opportunistic Contacts Opportunistic contacts are not scheduled, but rather present themselves unexpectedly. For example, an unscheduled aircraft flying overhead and beaconing, advertising its availability for communication, would present an opportunistic contact. Another type of opportunistic contact might be via an infrared or BlueTooth communication link between a personal digital assistant (PDA) and a kiosk in an airport concourse. The opportunistic contact begins as the PDA is brought near the kiosk, lasting an undetermined amount of time (i.e., until the link is lost or terminated). Intermittent - Predicted Contacts Cerf, et al. Expires September 2006 [Page 15]
Internet Draft draft-irtf-dtnrg-arch-05.txt March 2006 Predicted contacts are based on no fixed schedule, but rather are predictions of likely contact times and durations based on a history of previously observed contacts or some other information. Given a great enough confidence in a predicted contact, routes may be chosen based on this information. This is an active research area, and a few approaches having been proposed [LFC05]. 3.9 Fragmentation and Reassembly DTN fragmentation and reassembly is designed to improve the efficiency of message transfers by ensuring that contact volumes are fully utilized and by avoiding re-transmission of partially-forwarded messages. There are two forms of DTN fragmentation/reassembly: Proactive Fragmentation A DTN node may divide a block of application data into multiple smaller blocks and transmit each such block as an independent bundle. In this case the *final destination(s)* are responsible for extracting the smaller blocks from incoming bundles and reassembling them into the original larger bundle. This approach is called proactive fragmentation because it is used primarily when contact volumes are known (or predicted) in advance. Reactive Fragmentation DTN nodes sharing an edge in the DTN graph may fragment a bundle cooperatively when a bundle is only partially transferred. In this case, the receiving bundle layer modifies the incoming bundle to indicate it is a fragment, and forwards it normally. The previous- hop sender may learn that only a portion of the bundle was delivered to the next hop, and send the remaining portion(s) when subsequent contacts become available (possibly to different next- hops if routing changes). This is called reactive fragmentation because the fragmentation process occurs after an attempted transmission has taken place. The reactive fragmentation capability is not required to be available in every DTN implementation. It presents significant challenges with respect to handling digital signatures and authentication codes on messages because a signed message may be only partially received, thereby causing most message authentication codes to fail. When DTN security is present and enabled, it may therefore be necessary to proactively fragment large bundles into smaller units that are more convenient for digital signatures. Even if reactive fragmentation is not present in an implementation, the ability to re-assemble fragments at a destination is required in order to support DTN fragmentation. Furthermore, for contacts with volumes that are small compared to typical bundle sizes, some incremental delivery approach must be used (e.g. checkpoint/restart) to prevent data delivery livelock. Reactive fragmentation is one Cerf, et al. Expires September 2006 [Page 16]
Internet Draft draft-irtf-dtnrg-arch-05.txt March 2006 such approach, but other protocol layers could potentially handle this issue as well. 3.10 Reliability and Custody Transfer The most basic service provided by the bundle layer is unacknowledged, prioritized (but not guaranteed) unicast message delivery. It also provides two options for enhancing delivery reliability: end-to-end acknowledgments and custody transfer. Applications wishing to implement their own end-to-end message reliability mechanisms are free to utilize the acknowledgment. The custody transfer feature of the DTN architecture only specifies a coarse-grained retransmission capability, described next. Transmission of bundles with the Custody Transfer Requested option specified generally involves moving the responsibility for reliable delivery of the message among different DTN nodes in the network. For unicast delivery, this will typically involve moving a copy of the message "closer" (in terms of some routing metric) to its ultimate destination. The nodes receiving these copies along the way (and agreeing to accept the reliable delivery responsibility) are called "custodians." The movement of a message (and its delivery responsibility) from one node to another is called a "custody transfer." It is analogous to a database commit transaction [FHM03]. The exact meaning and design of custody transfer for multicast and anycast delivery remains to be fully explored. Custody transfer allows the source to delegate retransmission responsibility and recover its retransmission-related resources relatively soon after sending a bundle (on the order of the minimum round-trip time to the first bundle hop(s)). Not all nodes in a DTN are required by the DTN architecture to accept custody transfers, so it is not a true 'hop-by-hop' mechanism. For example, some nodes may have sufficient storage resources to sometimes act as custodians, but may elect to not offer such services when congested or running low on power. The existence of custodians can alter the way DTN routing is performed. In some circumstances, it may be beneficial to move a message to a custodian as quickly as possible even if it is further away (in terms of distance, time or some routing metric) from the final destination(s). Designing a system with this capability involves constructing more than one routing graph, and is an area of continued research. Custody transfer in DTN not only provides a method for tracking messages that require special handling and identifying DTN nodes that participate in custody transfer, it also provides a (weak) mechanism for enhancing the reliability of message delivery. Generally speaking, custody transfer relies on underlying reliable delivery protocols of the networks that it operates over to provide the primary means of reliable transfer from one bundle node to the next (set). However, when custody transfer is requested, the bundle layer Cerf, et al. Expires September 2006 [Page 17]
Internet Draft draft-irtf-dtnrg-arch-05.txt March 2006 provides an additional coarse-grained timeout and retransmission mechanism and an accompanying (bundle-layer) custodian-to-custodian acknowledgment signaling mechanism. When an application does *not* request custody transfer, this bundle layer timeout and retransmission mechanism is typically not employed, and successful bundle layer delivery depends solely on the reliability mechanisms of the underlying protocols. When a node accepts custody for a bundle that contains the Custody Transfer Requested option, a Custody Transfer Accepted Signal is sent by the bundle layer to the Current Custodian EID contained in the bundle header. In addition, the Current Custodian EID is updated to contain one of the forwarding node's (unicast) EIDs before the bundle is forwarded. When an application requests a message to be delivered with custody transfer, the request is advisory. In some circumstances, a source of a bundle for which custody transfer has been requested may not be able to provide this service. In such circumstances, the subject bundle may traverse multiple DTN nodes before it obtains a custodian. Bundles in this condition are specially marked with their Current Custodian EID field set to a null endpoint. In cases where applications wish to require the source to take custody of the bundle they may supply the Source Node Custody Acceptance Required delivery option. This may be useful to applications that desire a continuous "chain" of custody or that wish to exit after being ensured their data is safely held in a custodian. In a DTN network where one or more custodian-to-custodian hops are strictly one directional (and cannot be reversed), the DTN custody transfer mechanism will be affected over such hops due to the lack of any way to receive a custody signal (or any other information) back across the path, resulting in the expiration of the bundle at the ingress to the one-way hop. This situation does not necessarily mean the bundle has been lost; nodes on the other side of the hop may continue to transfer custody, and the bundle may be delivered successfully to its destination(s). However, in this circumstance a source that has requested to receive expiration BSRs for this bundle will receive an expiration report for the bundle, and possibly conclude (incorrectly) the bundle has been discarded and not delivered. Although this problem cannot be fully solved in this situation, a mechanism is provided to help ameliorate the seemingly incorrect information that may be reported when the bundle expires after having been transferred over a one-way hop. This is accomplished by the node at the ingress to the one-way hop reporting the existence of a known one-way path using a variant of a bundle status report. These types of reports are provided if the subject bundle requests the report using the 'report when bundle forwarded' delivery option. 3.11 DTN Support for Proxies and Application Layer Gateways Cerf, et al. Expires September 2006 [Page 18]
Internet Draft draft-irtf-dtnrg-arch-05.txt March 2006 One of the aims of DTN is to provide a common method for interconnecting application layer gateways and proxies. In cases where existing Internet applications can be made to tolerate delays, local proxies can be constructed to benefit from the existing communication capabilities provided by DTN [S05, T02]. Making such proxies compatible with DTN reduces the burden on the proxy author from being concerned with how to implement routing and reliability management and allows existing TCP/IP-based applications to operate unmodified over a DTN-based network. When DTN is used to provide a form of tunnel encapsulation for other protocols, it can be used in constructing overlay networks comprised of application layer gateways. The application acknowledgment capability is designed for such circumstances. This provides a common way for remote application layer gateways to signal the success or failure of non-DTN protocol operations initiated as a result of receiving DTN messages. Without this capability, such indicators would have to implemented by applications themselves in non-standard ways. 3.12 Time Stamps and Time Synchronization The DTN architecture depends on time synchronization among DTN nodes (supported by external, non-DTN protocols) for four primary purposes: bundle and fragment identification, routing with scheduled or predicted contacts, bundle expiration time computations, and application registration expiration. Bundle identification and expiration are supported by placing a creation timestamp and an explicit expiration field (expressed in seconds after the source time stamp) in each bundle header. The origination time stamp on an arriving bundle is made available to consuming applications by some system interface function. Each bundle is required to contain a timestamp unique to the bundle sender's EID. The concatenation of the Source EID and the creation timestamp serves as a unique identifier for a particular bundle, and is used for a number of purposes, including custody transfer and reassembly of bundle fragments. Time is also used in conjunction with application registrations. When an application expresses its desire to receive data for a particular EID, this registration is only maintained for a finite period of time, and may be specified by the application. For multicast registrations, an application may also specify a time range or "interest interval" for its registration. In this case, traffic sent to the specified EID any time during the specified interval will eventually be delivered to the application (unless such traffic has expired due to the expiration time provided by the application at the source or some other reason prevents such delivery). 3.13 Congestion and Flow Control at the Bundle Layer Cerf, et al. Expires September 2006 [Page 19]
Internet Draft draft-irtf-dtnrg-arch-05.txt March 2006 The subject of congestion control and flow control at the bundle layer is one on which the authors of this document have not yet reached complete consensus. We have unresolved concerns about the efficiency and efficacy of congestion and flow control schemes implemented across long and/or highly variable delay environments, especially with the custody transfer mechanism that may require nodes to retain messages for long periods of time. For the purposes of this document, we define "flow control" as a means of assuring that the average rate at which a sending node transmits data to a receiving node does not exceed the average rate at which the receiving node is prepared to receive data from that sender. (Note that this is a generalized notion of flow control, rather than one that applies only to end-to-end communication.) We define "congestion control" as a means of assuring that the aggregate rate at which all traffic sources inject data into a network does not exceed the maximum aggregate rate at which the network can deliver data to destination nodes over time. If flow control is propagated backward from congested nodes toward traffic sources, then the flow control mechanism can be used as at least a partial solution to the problem of congestion as well. DTN flow control decisions must be made within the bundle layer itself based on information about resources (in this case, primarily persistent storage) available within the bundle node. When storage resources become scarce, a DTN node has only a certain degree of freedom in handling the situation. It can always discard bundles which have expired-- an activity DTN nodes should perform regularly in any case. If it ordinarily is willing to accept custody for bundles, it can cease doing so. It can also discard bundles which have not expired but for which it has not accepted custody. A node must avoid discarding bundles for which it has accepted custody. Determining when a node should engage in or cease to engage in custody transfers is a resource allocation and scheduling problem of current research interest. In addition to the bundle layer mechanisms described above, a DTN node may be able to avail itself of support from lower layer protocols in affecting its own resource utilization. For example, a DTN node receiving a bundle using TCP/IP might intentionally slow down its receiving rate by performing read operations less frequently in order to reduce its offered load. This is possible because TCP provides its own flow control, so reducing the application data consumption rate could effectively implement a form of hop-by-hop flow control. Unfortunately, it may also lead to head-of-line blocking issues, depending on the nature of bundle multiplexing within a TCP connection. A protocol with more relaxed ordering constraints (e.g. SCTP [RFC2960]) might be preferable in such circumstances. 3.14 Security Cerf, et al. Expires September 2006 [Page 20]
Internet Draft draft-irtf-dtnrg-arch-05.txt March 2006 The possibility of severe resource scarcity in some delay-tolerant networks dictates that some form of authentication and access control to the network itself is required in many circumstances. It is not acceptable for an unauthorized user to flood the network with traffic easily, possibly denying service to authorized users. In many cases it is also not acceptable for unauthorized traffic to be forwarded over certain network links at all. This is especially true for exotic, mission-critical links. In light of these considerations, several goals are established for the security component of the DTN architecture: - Promptly prevent unauthorized applications from having their data carried through the DTN - Prevent unauthorized applications from asserting control over the DTN infrastructure - Prevent otherwise authorized applications from sending bundles at a rate or class of service for which they lack permission - Promptly discard bundles that are damaged or improperly modified in transit - Promptly detect and de-authorize compromised entities Many existing authentication and access control protocols designed for operation in low-delay, connected environments may not perform well in DTNs. In particular, updating access control lists and revoking ("blacklisting") credentials may be especially difficult. Also, approaches that require frequent access to centralized servers to complete an authentication or authorization transaction are not attractive. The consequences of these difficulties include delays in the onset of communication, delays in detecting and recovering from system compromise, and delays in completing transactions due to inappropriate access control or authentication settings. To help satisfy these security requirements in light of the challenges, the DTN architecture adopts a standard but optionally deployed security architecture [DTNSEC] that utilizes hop-by-hop and end-to-end authentication and integrity mechanisms. The purpose of using both approaches is to be able to handle access control for data forwarding separately from application-layer data integrity. While the end-to-end mechanism provides authentication for a principal such as a user (of which there may be many), the hop-by-hop mechanism is intended to authenticate DTN nodes as legitimate transceivers of bundles to each-other. Note that it is conceivable to construct a DTN in which only a subset of the nodes participate in the security mechanisms, resulting in a secure DTN overlay existing atop an insecure DTN overlay. This idea is relatively new and is still being explored. In accordance with the goals listed above, DTN nodes discard traffic as early as possible if authentication or access control checks fail. This approach meets the goals of removing unwanted traffic from being forwarded over specific high-value links, but also has the associated benefit of making denial-of-service attacks considerably harder to mount more generally, as compared with conventional Internet routers. Cerf, et al. Expires September 2006 [Page 21]
Internet Draft draft-irtf-dtnrg-arch-05.txt March 2006 However, the obvious cost for this capability is potentially larger computation and storage overhead required at DTN nodes. 4 State Management Considerations An important aspect of any networking architecture is its management of state. This section describes the state managed at the bundle layer and discusses how it is established and removed. 4.1 Application Registration State In long/variable delay environments, an asynchronous application interface seems most appropriate. Such interfaces typically include methods for applications to register callback actions when certain triggering events occur (e.g. when messages arrive). These registrations create state information called application registration state. Application registration state is typically created by explicit request of the application, and is removed by a separate explicit request, but may also be removed by an application-specified timer (it is thus "firm" state). In most cases, there must be a provision for retaining this state across application and operating system termination/restart conditions because a client/server message round- trip time may exceed the requesting application's execution time (or hosting system's uptime). In cases where applications are not automatically restarted but application registration state remains persistent, a method must be provided to indicate to the system what action to perform when the triggering event occurs (e.g. restarting some application, ignoring the event, etc.). To initiate a registration and thereby establish application registration state, an application specifies an Endpoint ID for which it wishes to receive messages, along with an optional time value indicating how long the registration should remain active. This operation is somewhat analogous to the bind() operation in the common sockets API. For registrations to groups (i.e., joins), a time interval may also be specified. The time interval refers to the range of origination times of messages sent to the specified EID. See Section 3.4 above for more details. 4.2 Custody Transfer State Cerf, et al. Expires September 2006 [Page 22]
Internet Draft draft-irtf-dtnrg-arch-05.txt March 2006 Custody transfer state includes information required to keep account of bundles for which a node has taken custody, as well as the protocol state related to transferring custody for one or more of them. The accounting-related state is created when a bundle is received. Custody transfer retransmission state is created when a transfer of custody is initiated by forwarding a bundle with the custody transfer requested delivery option specified. Retransmission state and accounting state may be released upon receipt of one or more Custody Transfer Succeeded signals, indicating custody has been moved. In addition, the bundle's expiration time (possibly mitigated by local policy) provides an upper bound on the time when this state is purged from the system in the event that it is not purged explicitly due to receipt of a signal. 4.3 Bundle Routing and Forwarding State As with the Internet architecture, we distinguish between routing and forwarding. Routing refers to the execution of a (possibly distributed) algorithm for computing routing paths according to some objective function (see [JFP04], for example). Forwarding refers to the act of moving a message from one DTN node to another. Routing makes use of routing state (the RIB, or routing information base), while forwarding makes use of state derived from routing, and is maintained as forwarding state (the FIB, or forwarding information base). The structure of the FIB and the rules for maintaining it are implementation choices. In some DTNs exchange of information used to update state in the RIB may take place on network paths distinct from those where exchange of application data takes place. The maintenance of state in the RIB is dependent on the type of routing algorithm being used. A routing algorithm may consider requested class of service and the location of potential custodians (for custody transfer, see section 3.10), and this information will tend to increase the size of the RIB. The separation between FIB and RIB is not required by this document, as these are implementation details to be decided by system implementers. The choice of routing algorithms is still under study. Bundles may occupy queues in nodes for a considerable amount of time. For unicast or anycast delivery, the amount of time is likely to be the interval between when a bundle arrives at a node and when it can be forwarded to its next hop. For multicast delivery of bundles, this could be significantly longer, up to a bundle's expiration time. This situation occurs when multicast delivery is utilized in such a way that nodes joining a group can obtain information previously sent to the group. In such cases, some nodes may act as "archivers" that provide copies of bundles to new participants that have already been delivered to other participants. 4.4 Security-Related State The DTN security approach described in [DTNSEC], when used, requires maintenance of state in all DTN nodes that use it. All such nodes Cerf, et al. Expires September 2006 [Page 23]
Internet Draft draft-irtf-dtnrg-arch-05.txt March 2006 are required to store their own private information (including their own policy and authentication material) and a block of information used to verify credentials. Furthermore, in most cases, DTN nodes will cache some public information (and possibly the credentials) of their next-hop (bundle) neighbors. All cached information has expiration times, and nodes are responsible for acquiring and distributing updates of public information and credentials prior to the expiration of the old set (in order to avoid a disruption in network service). In addition to basic end-to-end and hop-by-hop authentication, access control may be used in a DTN by one or more mechanisms such as capabilities or access control lists (ACLs). ACLs would represent another block of state present in any node that wishes to enforce security policy. ACLs are typically initialized at node configuration time and may be updated dynamically by DTN bundles or by some out of band technique. Capabilities or credentials may be revoked, requiring the maintenance of a revocation list ("black list," another form of state) to check for invalid authentication material that has already been distributed. Some DTNs may implement security boundaries enforced by selected nodes in the network, where end-to-end credentials may be checked in addition to checking the hop-by-hop credentials. (Doing so may require routing to be adjusted to ensure complete bundles pass through these points). Public information used to verify end-to-end authentication will typically be cached at these points. 4.5 Policy and Configuration State DTN nodes will contain some amount of configuration and policy information. Such information may alter the behavior of bundle forwarding. Examples of policy state include the types of cryptographic algorithms and access control procedures to use if DTN security is employed, whether nodes may become custodians, what types of convergence layer and routing protocols are in use, how bundles of differing priorities should be scheduled, where and for how long bundles and other data is stored, etc. 5 Application Structuring Issues DTN bundle delivery is intended to operate in a delay-tolerant fashion over a broad range of network types. This does not mean there *must* be large delays in the network; it means there *may* be very significant delays (including extended periods of disconnection between sender and intended recipient). The DTN protocols are delay tolerant, so applications using them must also be delay tolerant in order to operate effectively in environments subject to significant delay or disruption. The communication primitives provided by the DTN architecture are based on asynchronous, message-oriented communication which differs from conversational request/response communication. In general, Cerf, et al. Expires September 2006 [Page 24]
Internet Draft draft-irtf-dtnrg-arch-05.txt March 2006 applications should attempt to include enough information in a message so that it may be treated as an independent unit of work by the receiving entity. (This represents a form of "application data unit" [CT90]). The goal is to minimize synchronous interchanges between applications that are separated by a network characterized by long and possibly highly variable delays. A single file transfer request message, for example, might include authentication information, file location information, and requested file operation (thus "bundling" this information together). Comparing this style of operation to a classic FTP transfer, one sees that the bundled model can complete in one round trip, whereas an FTP file "put" operation can take as many as eight round trips to get to a point where file data can flow [DFS02]. Delay-tolerant applications must consider additional factors beyond the conversational implications of long delay paths. For example, an application may terminate (voluntarily or not) between the time it sends a message and the time it expects a response. If this possibility has been anticipated, the application can be "re- instantiated" with state information saved in persistent storage. This is an implementation issue, but also an application design consideration. Some consideration of delay-tolerant application design can result in applications that work reasonably well in low-delay environments, and that do not suffer extraordinarily in high or highly-variable delay environments. 6 Convergence Layer Considerations for Use of Underlying Protocols Implementation experience with the DTN architecture has revealed an important architectural construct and interface for DTN nodes [DBFJHP04]. Not all underlying protocols in different protocol families provide the same exact functionality, so some additional adaptation or augmentation on a per-protocol or per-protocol-family basis may be required. This adaptation is accomplished by a set of convergence layers placed between the bundle layer and underlying protocols. The convergence layers manage the protocol-specific details of interfacing with particular underlying protocols and present a consistent interface to the bundle layer. The complexity of one convergence layer may vary substantially from another, depending on the type of underlying protocol it adapts. For example, a TCP/IP convergence layer for use in the Internet might only have to add message boundaries to TCP streams, whereas a convergence layer for some network where no reliable transport protocol exists might be considerably more complex (e.g. it might have to implement reliability, fragmentation, flow-control, etc.) if reliable delivery is to be offered to the bundle layer. As convergence layers implement protocols above and beyond the basic bundle protocol specified in [BSPEC], they will be defined in their own documents (in a fashion similar to the way encapsulations for IP Cerf, et al. Expires September 2006 [Page 25]
Internet Draft draft-irtf-dtnrg-arch-05.txt March 2006 datagrams are specified on a per-underlying-protocol basis, such as in RFC 894 [RFC894]). 7 Summary The DTN architecture addresses many of the problems of heterogeneous networks that must operate in environments subject to long delays and discontinuous end-to-end connectivity. It is based on asynchronous messaging and uses postal mail as a model of service classes and delivery semantics. It accommodates many different forms of connectivity, including scheduled, predicted, and opportunistically connected links. It introduces a novel approach to end-to-end reliability across frequently partitioned and unreliable networks. It also proposes a model for securing the network infrastructure against unauthorized access. It is our belief that this architecture is applicable to many different types of challenged environments. 8 Security Considerations Security is an integral concern for the design of the Delay Tolerant Network Architecture, but its use is optional. Section 3.13 of this document presents some factors to consider for securing the DTN architecture, but a separate document [DTNSEC] defines the security architecture in much more detail. 9 IANA Considerations This document specifies the architecture for Delay Tolerant Networking which uses Internet-standard URIs for its Endpoint Identifiers. URIs intended for use with DTN should be compliant with the guidelines given in [RFC3986]. 10 Normative References [RFC3978] Bradner, S., "IETF Rights in Contributions", BCP 78, RFC 3978, March 2005. [RFC3979] Bradner, S., "Intellectual Property Rights in IETF Technology", BCP 79, RFC 3979, March 2005. [RFC3986] T. Berners-Lee, R. Fielding, L. Masinter, "Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax", STD 66, RFC 3986, Jan 2005. 11 Informative References [SB03] S. Burleigh et al, "Delay-Tolerant Networking - An Approach to Interplanetary Internet," IEEE Communications Magazine, July 2003. Cerf, et al. Expires September 2006 [Page 26]
Internet Draft draft-irtf-dtnrg-arch-05.txt March 2006 [FW03] F. Warthman, "Delay-Tolerant Networks (DTNs): A Tutorial v1.1," Wartham Associates, 2003. Available from http://www.dtnrg.org. [KF03] K. Fall, "A Delay-Tolerant Network Architecture for Challenged Internets," Proceedings SIGCOMM, Aug 2003. [JFP04] S. Jain, K. Fall, R. Patra, "Routing in a Delay Tolerant Network," Proceedings SIGCOMM, Aug/Sep 2004. [DFS02] R. Durst, P. Feighery, K. Scott, "Why not use the Standard Internet Suite for the Interplanetary Internet?", MITRE White Paper, 2002. Available from http://www.ipnsig.org/reports/TCP_IP.pdf [CK74] V. Cerf, R. Kahn, "A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication," IEEE Trans. on Comm., COM-22(5), May 1974. [IGE00] C. Intanagonwiwat, R. Govindan, D. Estrin, "Directed Diffusion: A scalable and robust communication paradigm for sensor networks," Proceedings MobiCOM, Aug 2000. [WSBL99] W. Adjie-Winoto, E. Schwartz, H. Balakrishnan, J. Lilley, "The design and implementation of an intentional naming system", Proc. 17th ACM SOSP, Kiawah Island, SC, Dec. 1999. [CT90] D. Clark, D. Tennenhouse, "Architectural Considerations for a new generation of protocols," Proceedings SIGCOMM, 1990. [ISCHEMES] http://www.iana.org/assignments/uri-schemes [JDPF05] S. Jain, M. Demmer, R. Patra, K. Fall, "Using Redundancy to Cope with Failures in a Delay Tolerant Network," Proceedings SIGCOMM 2005. [WJMF05] Y. Wang, S. Jain, M. Martonosi, K. Fall, "Erasure coding based routing in opportunistic Networks", Proceedings SIGCOMM Workshop on Delay Tolerant Networks, 2005. [ZAZ05] W. Zhao, M. Ammar, E. Zegura, "Multicast in Delay Tolerant Networks", Proceedings SIGCOMM Workshop on Delay Tolerant Networks, 2005. [LFC05] J. Leguay, T. Friedman, V. Conan, "DTN Routing in a Mobility Pattern Space", Proceedings SIGCOMM Workshop on Delay Tolerant Networks, 2005. [AF03] J. Alonso, K. Fall, "A Linear Programming Formulation of Flows over Time with Piecewise Constant Capacity and Transit Times", Intel Research Technical Report IRB-TR-03-007, June 2003. [FHM03] K. Fall, W. Hong, S. Madden, "Custody Transfer for Reliable Delivery in Delay Tolerant Networks", Intel Research Technical Report IRB-TR-03-030, July 2003. Cerf, et al. Expires September 2006 [Page 27]
Internet Draft draft-irtf-dtnrg-arch-05.txt March 2006 [RFC2960] R. Stewart et. al., "Stream Control Transmission Protocol", RFC 2960, Oct. 2000. [BSPEC] K. Scott, S. Burleigh, "Bundle Protocol Specification", draft-irtf-dtnrg-bundle-spec-05.txt, Work in Progress, March 2006. [DTNSEC] S. Symington, S. Farrell, H. Weiss, "Bundle Security Protocol Specification", draft-irtf-dtnrg-bundle-security-01.txt, Work in Progress, March 2006. [DTNSOV] S. Farrell, S. Symington, H. Weiss, "Delay-Tolerant Networking Security Overview", draft-irtf-dtnrg-sec-overview-01.txt, Work in Progress, March 2006. [DBFJHP04] M. Demmer, E. Brewer, K. Fall, S. Jain, M. Ho, R. Patra, "Implementing Delay Tolerant Networking", Intel Research Technical Report IRB-TR-04-020, Dec. 2004. [RFC894] C. Hornig, "Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams over Ethernet Networks", RFC 894, Apr. 1984. [S05] K. Scott, "Disruption Tolerant Networking Proxies for On-the- Move Tactical Networks", Proc. MILCOM 2005 (unclassified track), Oct. 2005. [T02] W. Thies, et. al, "Searching the World Wide Web in Low- Connectivity Communities", Proc. WWW Conference (Global Community track), May 2002. Authors' Addresses Dr. Vinton G. Cerf Google Corporation Suite 384 13800 Coppermine Rd. Herndon, VA 20171 Telephone +1 (703) 234-1823 FAX +1 (703) 848-0727 Email vint@google.com Scott C. Burleigh Jet Propulsion Laboratory 4800 Oak Grove Drive M/S: 179-206 Pasadena, CA 91109-8099 Telephone +1 (818) 393-3353 FAX +1 (818) 354-1075 Email Scott.Burleigh@jpl.nasa.gov Robert C. Durst The MITRE Corporation Cerf, et al. Expires September 2006 [Page 28]
Internet Draft draft-irtf-dtnrg-arch-05.txt March 2006 7515 Colshire Blvd. M/S H300 McLean, VA 22102 Telephone +1 (703) 883-7535 FAX +1 (703) 883-7142 Email durst@mitre.org Dr. Kevin Fall Intel Research, Berkeley 2150 Shattuck Ave., #1300 Berkeley, CA 94704 Telephone +1 (510) 495-3014 FAX +1 (510) 495-3049 Email kfall@intel.com Adrian J. Hooke Jet Propulsion Laboratory 4800 Oak Grove Drive M/S: 303-400 Pasadena, CA 91109-8099 Telephone +1 (818) 354-3063 FAX +1 (818) 393-3575 Email Adrian.Hooke@jpl.nasa.gov Dr. Keith L. Scott The MITRE Corporation 7515 Colshire Blvd. M/S H300 McLean, VA 22102 Telephone +1 (703) 883-6547 FAX +1 (703) 883-7142 Email kscott@mitre.org Leigh Torgerson Jet Propulsion Laboratory 4800 Oak Grove Drive M/S: T1710- Pasadena, CA 91109-8099 Telephone +1 (818) 393-0695 FAX +1 (818) 354-9068 Email Leigh.Torgerson@jpl.nasa.gov Howard S. Weiss SPARTA, Inc. 9861 Broken Land Parkway Columbia, MD 21046 Telephone +1 (410) 381-9400 x201 FAX +1 (410) 381-5559 Email hsw@sparta.com Please refer comments to dtn-interest@mailman.dtnrg.org. The Delay Tolerant Networking Research Group (DTNRG) web site is located at http://www.dtnrg.org. Cerf, et al. Expires September 2006 [Page 29]
Internet Draft draft-irtf-dtnrg-arch-05.txt March 2006 Copyright Notice Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2006). This document is subject to the rights, licenses and restrictions contained in BCP 78, and except as set forth therein, the authors retain all their rights. Disclaimer of Validity This document and the information contained herein are provided on an "AS IS" basis and THE CONTRIBUTOR, THE ORGANIZATION HE/SHE REPRESENTS OR IS SPONSORED BY (IF ANY), THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Intellectual Property The IETF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any Intellectual Property Rights or other rights that might be claimed to pertain to the implementation or use of the technology described in this document or the extent to which any license under such rights might or might not be available; nor does it represent that it has made any independent effort to identify any such rights. Information on the procedures with respect to rights in RFC documents can be found in BCP 78 and BCP 79. Copies of IPR disclosures made to the IETF Secretariat and any assurances of licenses to be made available, or the result of an attempt made to obtain a general license or permission for the use of such proprietary rights by implementers or users of this specification can be obtained from the IETF on-line IPR repository at http://www.ietf.org/ipr. The IETF invites any interested party to bring to its attention any copyrights, patents or patent applications, or other proprietary rights that may cover technology that may be required to implement this standard. Please address the information to the IETF at ietf- ipr@ietf.org. Cerf, et al. Expires September 2006 [Page 30]
