Neat paper. I think the most meaningful criticism I can make is that the authors are not so much proposing a new technology (certainly they are, but it's fairly simple, and is merely sketched in the paper), but making the controversial observation that in "challenged" networks, it may no longer be reasonable to expect any sort of connection-oriented protocols. The theme of the postal service appears, in the authors' vision, on both sides of the current internet: that is to say, the internet is modeled after the postal service, and DTN is a postal-like service overlaid on the internet. Statistical multiplexing is every bit as flexible as the postal model, but higher levels of the communication stack sacrifice this flexibility for stronger guarantees.
I had never though about the idea of "terrestrial mobile networks." I don't think the authors have a good solution yet for dealing with capacity issues at DTN gateways and the general logistical issues associated with "shipping": busses carrying bits are likely often full, or underutilized. Of course, logistics is a well studied area from which we can learn lessons.
The authors anticipate the criticism that the basic DTN idea could be well approximated by an "everything over email" approach to communication, albeit with weaker semantics.
No comments:
Post a Comment