Evaluation of the Average Packet Delivery Delay in Highly-Disrupted Networks: The DTN and IP-like Protocol Cases

Delay/Disruption-Tolerant Networking (DTN) represents an innovative communication paradigm that enables the communication over Intermittently-Connected Networks (ICNs). ICNs are characterized by unpredictable or scheduled contacts among nodes, high latency, and high bit error rates. DTNs, unlike TCP/IP protocols, make use of store-and-forward techniques in order to cope with intermittent link issues. In this letter, a simple model is proposed to compute the average packet delivery delay in ICNs. Both the IP-like paradigm used by traditional TCP/IP protocols and DTN are considered. The results provide theoretical insights into the applications of these two approaches to ICNs. Numerical results and simulations are presented, too.