Disruption Tolerant Networking

Disruption Tolerant Networking is also known by the name of DTN. It is a networking architecture that is designed specifically to provide the communications in the most unstable and stressed environments, that is, this protocol is extensively used in the places where the network is subjected to long lasting and frequent disruptions and high bit error rates which can cause massive delays in the communication problem, and along with that, data loss in the communications made can occur.

The TCP/IP was originally used for the disrupted network and it is still used in some place, however, the TCP/IP protocol is not that much resilient to the disruptions as DTN, therefore, it is often recommended over the TCP/IP for packet delivery and communications. This DTN protocol is based upon a relatively new protocol that just came to the market, with the name of Bundle protocol and is defined in the RFC 5050. The reason why it is said that the DTN is made on the architecture of the bundle protocol, as it also makes use of the store and forward approach across routers when there is disruption present in the network as during the disruption no direct connection between the source node and the destination node can be made, so the only way to bypass the noise and disruption is to use the store and forward approach.

The reason the TCP/IP protocol fails to work is because it is unable to make use of the store and forward approach as it is not based on the Bundle Protocol. One thing should be remembered that the even though the routers in the DTN makes use of the store and forward technique, it still does not mean that a network needs to have a large storage capacity in order to maintain the end to end data integrity.