Performance evaluation of a disruption tolerant network proxy for tactical edge networks

Abstract

Disruption/Delay tolerant networking (DTN) is a promising solution to mitigate the effects of periodic link outages that last seconds to minutes, which are prevalent in high capacity airborne tactical networks that are directional in nature and highly affected by aircraft body blockage. There are several considerations for applying the DTN Bundle Protocol (RFC 5050) in tactical edge networks which have ciphertext/plaintext boundaries resulting in multiple deployment options: 1) black-side DTN tunnel, 2) red-side DTN interface, 3) red-side DTN proxy, and DTN-enabled applications. Each of these approaches have benefits and limitations. In this paper, we present a DTN proxy implementation that can work on both red or black sides of tactical edge networks and show test results that help us better understand the capability of the approach, its limitations, and in what circumstances it is most appropriate. Through experimental and theoretical analysis, we show that TCP file transfer speed can be increased by up to 143.39% and 218% for two-hop and three-hop aerial backbone networks respectively when each link suffers 25% independent outage.