Planning for interruptions

GCN tech brief

• By Patrick Marshall
• May 09, 2007

The Internet Engineering Task Force has posted a request for comments on delay-tolerant networking (DTN). As described in RFC 4838, DTN is a protocol for transmitting data across networks with intermittent connectivity.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory ' along with volunteers from Google, Intel and Mitre ' is developing DTN. The lab had originally intended DTN for interplanetary data communications, but the Defense Department has funded the effort with a view toward using the technology on the battlefield, where end-to-end network connectivity is not ensured.