Delay/Disruption Tolerant Networking
charter-ietf-dtn-01-00

The Delay/Disruption Tolerant Network (DTN) Working Group specifies mechanisms for data communications in the presence of long delays and/or intermittent connectivity. The Working Group has submitted the Bundle Protocol v7 (BPv7), corresponding Bundle Protocol Security protocol (BPSec) and an interoperable Security Context, and the TCP Convergence Layer specifications for publication as standards track RFCs. Multiple independent implementations exist for these technologies and multiple deployments in space and terrestrial environments, and the technology is now used in production by government and commercial organizations world-wide.

This Working Group now focuses on the further work relevant to the area of Delay/Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN), dividing future work items into 3 broad categories:

• An architecture for Naming, Addressing and Forwarding

  The Bundle Protocol v7 defines an encoding of Names for use in DTN, but the detailed semantics have not been specified. The Working Group will define a common architecture for the delay/disruption tolerant assignment of names, and the late-binding of such names during bundle forwarding to end-points within a DTN.

• The definition of protocols and best practices in the areas of Operations, Administration and Management (OAM), and Key Management

  Existing IETF protocols for OAM and Key Management generally rely on a bi-directional end-to-end path between devices, and in a Delay/Disruption Tolerant Network such paths rarely exist. To enable OAM and Key Management in such cases, there is a need to standardize alternative methods and their supporting protocols and data models.

• Extensions to existing protocols

  Extensions to the Bundle Protocol to enable reliability signalling, tunnelling and Quality of Service indication are needed for the operational deployment of Delay/Disruption Tolerant Networks, and these capabilities will be standardized by the Working Group.

  Additional extensions to the Bundle Protocol, additional Security Context definitions for BPSec, and new Convergence Layer adaptors will be considered on a case-by-case basis by the working group.

Intentionally excluded from the current Working Group charter is Routing in DTN, as the topic is considered too open, and candidate protocols suitable for standardization do not yet exist. This does not preclude discussion of potential approaches to the problem of Routing in DTNs within the Working Group, but personal drafts on the topic will not be adopted under this charter.

Work Items include:

• Naming and Addressing Architecture document

• Neighbor Discovery protocol specification

• Asynchronous Management Protocol specification

• Asynchronous Data Model specification

• Key Management protocol specification

• Bundle progress signalling extension to Bundle Protocol specification

• Bundle-in-Bundle Encapsulation extension to Bundle Protocol specification
• Quality of Service indication extension to Bundle Protocol specification