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Report on an Arctic summer DTN trial

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Abstract

Delay- and disruption-tolerant networking (DTN) is an emerging area of networking research that will benefit from real-world trials and testbeds. We describe a week long DTN trial carried out during the summer of 2009 in the Laponia area of Northern Sweden that involved the provision of basic email and web services to users who were 57 km distant from any power or networking infrastructure. The trial validated our design and successfully demonstrated the use of email via helicopter-transported data-mules. With the aim of making it easier for others to replicate this kind of trial, the hardware and software used are described with references to full specifications, as are the results of the initial 2009 trial. We also describe plans for an extended trial in summer 2010 in the same area.

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Notes

  1. http://www.dtnrg.org/. All URLs accessed at 2010-09-23 unless otherwise noted.

  2. http://dtn.sourceforge.org/.

  3. http://www.n4c.eu/.

  4. http://www.extremecom.org/.

  5. http://tier.cs.berkeley.edu/.

  6. http://www.fiskflyg.se/.

  7. http://www.eurotech-ltd.co.uk/en/products.aspx?pg=PROTEUS&pid=10120.

  8. http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=35463.

  9. http://www.routerboard.com/pricelist.php?showProduct=38.

  10. http://www.engeniustech.com/datacom/products/details.aspx?id=250.

  11. http://www.studer-inno.com/?cat=battery_monitoring.

  12. http://ie.farnell.com/1339314.

  13. http://www.sunshinesolar.co.uk/khxc/gbu0-prodshow/SS20WP.html.

  14. http://www.sunshinesolar.co.uk/khxc/gbu0-prodshow/REG7.html.

  15. http://www.sunshinesolar.co.uk/khxc/gbu0-prodshow/E-REG10A.html.

  16. http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/611/6.

  17. http://www.euroboxenclosures.co.uk/mild-steel-cabinets.php.

  18. http://www.pcengines.ch/wrap2e1.htm.

  19. http://www.cyberbajt.pl/produkt/1444/.

  20. http://www.pcengines.ch/case2c.htm.

  21. http://www.openvpn.net/.

  22. http://www.itelite.net/products-desc.php?id=274.

  23. http://dtn.sourceforge.net/.

  24. http://dtn.sourceforge.net/DTN2/doc/manual/configuration.html#discovery.

  25. One could argue that DTN2 should not do this where the destination CLA, host and port are the same, but that is the current behaviour.

  26. At the time of writing, the DTNRG are investigating ways of relaxing this “rough real-time” requirement.

  27. http://comp.uark.edu/ajarthu/mod_auth_form.

  28. The file ’gnuplots/contacts/cont.num.moved’ contains the manually modified lines with identifying comments. See Sect. 7 for details on how to access this file.

  29. http://www.dtnrg.org/wiki/DtnBone.

  30. A defect we plan to fix prior to the 2010 trial.

  31. http://dtn.dsg.cs.tcd.ie/n4c-summer09/.

  32. http://down.dsg.cs.tcd.ie/s10inf/.

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Acknowledgments

This paper reflects the work of many people involved in the N4C project, the DTN community and the DTNRG. The authors are especially indebted to N4C partners, in particular Fritz-Ake Kuoljok (Fritte) and Samo Grasic from LTU and Elwyn Davies from Folly Consulting who gave invaluable assistance for the 2009 trial. Darragh O’Keefe carried out significant work on data analysis whilst a student with TCD. We thank the anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments. This work was carried out as part of the FP7 N4C project funded by the EU under contract No. 223994.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland

    Stephen Farrell, Alex McMahon & Stefan Weber

  2. Dell Consulting, Dublin, Ireland

    Eoin Meehan

  3. Intel Labs, Leixlip, Ireland

    Kerry Hartnett

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  1. Stephen Farrell
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  2. Alex McMahon
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  3. Eoin Meehan
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  4. Stefan Weber
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  5. Kerry Hartnett
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Correspondence to Stephen Farrell.

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Farrell, S., McMahon, A., Meehan, E. et al. Report on an Arctic summer DTN trial. Wireless Netw 17, 1127–1156 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11276-011-0323-1

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