Tree Free Utility Based Multicast in DTNs

Delay Tolerant Networks (DTNs) are a class of net-works characterized by intermittent connectivity, long delays and non-contemporaneous end to end paths. Internet protocols will not work in these environments and special protocols must be developed to serve them. Often nodes in these networks are battery operated and have limited shared band-width so network transmissions must be kept to a minimum for long lasting and consistent operation of the network. Multicast protocols can be used to reduce transmissions while also reducing bandwidth usage. The mobility and frequent network topology changes in DTNs makes it hard to develop tree based multicast protocols, this paper proposes a protocol that does not use multicast trees, but places all destination addresses in the header and forwards multicast messages according to underlying routing protocol.