DTN Research Group A. Lindgren Internet-Draft SICS Intended status: Experimental A. Doria Expires: April 26, 2011 Lulea University of Technology E. Davies Folly Consulting S. Grasic Lulea University of Technology October 23, 2010 Probabilistic Routing Protocol for Intermittently Connected Networks draft-irtf-dtnrg-prophet-08 Abstract This document is a product of the Delay Tolerant Networking Research Group and has been reviewed by that group. No objections to its publication as an RFC were raised. This document defines PRoPHET, a Probabilistic Routing Protocol using History of Encounters and Transitivity. PRoPHET is a variant of the epidemic routing protocol for intermittently connected networks that operates by pruning the epidemic distribution tree to minimize resource usage while still attempting to achieve the best case routing capabilities of epidemic routing. It is intended for use in sparse mesh networks where there is no guarantee that a fully connected path between source and destination exists at any time, rendering traditional routing protocols unable to deliver messages between hosts. These networks are examples of networks where there is a disparity between the latency requirements of applications and the capabilities of the underlying network (networks often referred to as Delay and Disruption Tolerant). The document presents an architectural overview followed by the protocol specification. Status of this Memo This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet- Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 1] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." This Internet-Draft will expire on April 26, 2011. Copyright Notice Copyright (c) 2010 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved. This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License. Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 2] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 Table of Contents 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 1.1. Relation to the Delay Tolerant Networking architecture . . 7 1.2. Applicability of the protocol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 1.3. PRoPHET as Compared to Regular Routing Protocols . . . . . 9 1.4. Requirements notation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 2. Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 2.1. PRoPHET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 2.1.1. Delivery Predictability Calculation . . . . . . . . . 11 2.1.2. Optional Delivery Predictability Optimizations . . . . 14 2.1.3. Forwarding Strategies and Queueing Policies . . . . . 15 2.2. Bundle Agent to Routing Agent Interface . . . . . . . . . 16 2.3. PRoPHET Zone Gateways . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 2.4. Lower Layer Requirements and Interface . . . . . . . . . . 18 3. Protocol Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 3.1. Neighbor Awareness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 3.2. Information Exchange Phase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 3.2.1. Routing Information Base Dictionary . . . . . . . . . 20 3.3. Routing Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 3.4. Bundle Passing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 3.4.1. Custody . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 3.5. When a Bundle Reaches its Destination . . . . . . . . . . 23 3.6. Forwarding Strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 3.7. Queueing Policies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 4. Message Formats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 4.1. Header . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 4.2. TLV Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 4.3. TLVs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 4.3.1. Hello TLV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 4.3.2. Error TLV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 4.3.3. Routing Information Base Dictionary TLV . . . . . . . 37 4.3.4. Routing Information Base TLV . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 4.3.5. Bundle Offer and Response TLV . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 5. Detailed Operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 5.1. High Level State Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 5.2. Hello Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 5.2.1. State Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 5.2.2. Interaction with Nodes Using Version 1 of PRoPHET . . 48 5.3. Information Exchange and Bundle Passing Phase . . . . . . 49 5.3.1. State Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 6. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 6.1. Attacks on the Operation of the Protocol . . . . . . . . . 54 6.1.1. Black Hole Attack . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 6.1.2. Limited Black Hole Attack/Identity Spoofing . . . . . 55 6.1.3. Fake PRoPHET ACKs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 6.1.4. Bundle Store Overflow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 6.1.5. Bundle Store Overflow with Delivery Predictability Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 3] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 Manipulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 6.2. Interactions with External Routing Domains . . . . . . . . 57 7. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 7.1. DTN Routing Protocol Number . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 7.2. PRoPHET Version . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 7.3. Header Flags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 7.4. Result . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 7.5. Code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 7.6. Error and Log Messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 7.7. TLV Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 7.8. Hello TLV Flags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 7.9. Error TLV Flags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 7.10. RIB Base Dictionary TLV Flags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 7.11. RIB TLV Flags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 7.12. RIB Flags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 7.13. Bundle Flags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 8. Implementation Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 9. Deployment Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 10. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 11. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 11.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 11.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 Appendix A. PRoPHET Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Appendix B. Neighbor Discovery Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 4] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 1. Introduction The Probabilistic Routing Protocol using History of Encounters and Transitivity (PRoPHET) algorithm enables communication between participating nodes wishing to communicate in an intermittently connected network where at least some of the nodes are mobile. One of the most basic requirements for 'traditional' (IP) networking is that there must exist a fully connected path between communication endpoints for the duration of a communication session in order for communication to be possible. There are, however, a number of scenarios where connectivity is intermittent so that this is not the case (thus rendering the end-to-end use of traditional networking protocols impossible), but where it still is desirable to allow communication between nodes. Consider a network of mobile nodes using wireless communication with a limited range which is less than the typical excursion distances over which the nodes travel. Communication between a pair of nodes at a particular instant is only possible when the distance between the nodes is less than the range of the wireless communication. This means that, even if messages are forwarded through other nodes acting as intermediate routes, there is no guarantee of finding a viable continuous path when it is needed to transmit a message. One way to enable communication in such scenarios, is by allowing messages to be buffered at intermediate nodes for a longer time than normally occurs in the queues of conventional routers (c.f. Delay and Disruption Tolerant Networking [RFC4838]). It would then be possible to exploit the mobility of a subset of the nodes to bring messages closer to their destination by transferring them to other nodes as they meet. Figure 1 shows how the mobility of nodes in such a scenario can be used to eventually deliver a message to its destination. In this figure, the four sub-figures (a) - (d) represent the physical positions of four nodes (A, B, C, and D) at four time instants, increasing from (a) to (d) and associated radio ranges. At the start time node A has a message (indicated by a * next to that node) to be delivered to node D, but there does not exist a path between nodes A and D because of the limited range of available wireless connections. As shown in sub-figures (a) - (d), the mobility of the nodes allows the message to first be transferred to node B, then to node C, and when finally node C moves within range of node D, it can deliver the message to its final destination. This technique is known as 'transitive networking'. Mobility and contact patterns in real application scenarios are likely to be non-random, but rather be predictable, based on the underlying activities of the higher level application (this could for example stem from human mobility having regular traffic patterns Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 5] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 based on repeating behavioral patterns (e.g., going to work or the market and returning home) and social interactions, or from any number of other node mobility situations where a proportion of nodes are mobile and move in ways that are not completely random over time but have a degree of predictability over time). This means that if a node has visited a location or been in contact with a certain node several times before, it is likely that it will visit that location or meet that node again. PRoPHET can also be used in some networks where such mobility as described above does not take place. Predictable patterns in node contacts can also occur among static nodes where varying radio conditions or power-saving sleeping schedules cause connection between nodes to be intermittent. In previously discussed mechanisms to enable communication in intermittently connected networks, such as Epidemic Routing [vahdat_00], very general approaches have been taken to the problem at hand. In an environment where buffer space and bandwidth are infinite, Epidemic Routing will give an optimal solution to the problem of routing in an intermittently connected network with regard to message delivery ratio and latency. However, in most cases neither bandwidth nor buffer space is infinite, but instead they are rather scarce resources, especially in the case of sensor networks. PRoPHET is fundamentally an epidemic protocol with strict pruning. An epidemic protocol works by transferring its data to each and every node it meets. As data is passed from node to node, it is eventually passed to all nodes, including the target node. One of the advantages of an epidemic protocol is that by trying every path, it is guaranteed to try the best path. One of the disadvantages of an epidemic protocol is the extensive use of resources with every node needing to carry every packet and the associated transmission costs. PRoPHET's goal is to gain the advantages of an epidemic protocol without paying the price in storage and communication resources incurred by the basic epidemic protocol. That is, PRoPHET offers an alternative to basic Epidemic Routing, with lower demands on buffer space and bandwidth, and with equal or better performance in cases where those resources are limited, and without loss of generality in scenarios where it is suitable to use PRoPHET. Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 6] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 +----------------------------+ +----------------------------+ | ___ | | ___ | | ___ / \ | | / \ | | / \ ( D ) | | ( D ) | | ( B ) \___/ | | ___ \___/ | | \___/ ___ | | /___\ ___ | |___ / \ | | (/ B*\) / \ | | \ ( C ) | | (\_A_/) ( C ) | | A* ) \___/ | | \___/ \___/ | |___/ | | | +----------------------------+ +----------------------------+ (a) Time t (b) Time (t + dt) +----------------------------+ +----------------------------+ | _____ ___ | | ___ ___ | | / / \ \ / \ | | / \ /___\ | | ( (B C* ) ( D ) | | ( B ) (/ D*\) | | \_\_/_/ \___/ | | \___/ (\_C_/) | | ___ | | ___ \___/ | | / \ | | / \ | | ( A ) | | ( A ) | | \___/ | | \___/ | | | | | +----------------------------+ +----------------------------+ (c) Time (t + 2*dt) (d) Time (t + 3*dt) Figure 1: Example of transitive communication This document presents a framework for probabilistic routing in intermittently connected networks, using an assumption of non-random mobility of nodes to improve the delivery rate of messages while keeping buffer usage and communication overhead at a low level. First, a probabilistic metric called delivery predictability is defined. The document then goes on to define a probabilistic routing protocol using this metric. 1.1. Relation to the Delay Tolerant Networking architecture The Delay Tolerant Networking (DTN) architecture[RFC4838] defines an architecture for communication in environments where traditional communication protocols can not be used due to excessive delays, link outages and other extreme conditions. The intermittently connected networks considered here are a subset of those covered by the DTN architecture. The DTN architecture defines routes to be computed based on a collection of 'contacts' indicating the start time, duration, endpoints, forwarding capacity and latency of a link in the topology graph. These contacts may be deterministic, or may be derived from estimates. The architecture defines some different Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 7] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 types of intermittent contacts. The ones called opportunistic and predicted are the ones addressed by this protocol. Opportunistic contacts are those that are not scheduled, but rather present themselves unexpectedly and frequently arise due to node mobility. Predicted contacts are like opportunistic contacts, but based on some information, it might be possible to draw some statistical conclusion as to whether or not a contact will be present soon. The DTN architecture also introduces the bundle protocol [RFC5050], which provides a way for applications to 'bundle' an entire session, including both data and meta-data, into a single message, or bundle, that can be sent as a unit. The bundle protocol also provides end- to-end addressing and acknowledgments. PRoPHET is specifically intended to provide routing services in a network environment that uses bundles as its data transfer mechanism, but could be also be used in other intermittent environments. 1.2. Applicability of the protocol The PRoPHET routing protocol is mainly targeted at situations where at least some of the nodes are mobile with mobility that creates connectivity patterns that are not completely random over time but have a degree of predictability. Such connectivity patterns can also occur in networks where nodes switch off radios to preserve power. Human mobility patterns (often containing daily or weekly periodic activities) provide one such example where PRoPHET is expected to be applicable, but the applicability is not limited to scenarios including humans. In order for PRoPHET to benefit from such predictability in the contact patterns between nodes, it is expected the network exist under similar circumstances over a longer time-scale (in terms of node encounters) so that the predictability can be accurately estimated. The PRoPHET protocol expects nodes to be able to establish a local TCP link in order to exchange the information needed by the PRoPHET protocol. Protocol signaling is done out-of-band over this TCP link, without involving the Bundle Protocol agent [RFC5050]. The PRoPHET protocol is however expected to interact with the Bundle Protocol agent to retrieve information about available bundles as well as requesting that a bundle is sent to another node (it is expected that the associated bundle agents are then able to establish a link (probably over the TCP convergence layer) to perform this transfer). While PRoPHET is currently defined to run over TCP, in future Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 8] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 versions the information exchange may take place over other transport protocols as well and these may not provide message segmentation. Hence the capability is provided to segment protocol messages directly in the PRoPHET layer. In a large Delay and Disruption Tolerant Network (DTN), network conditions may vary widely, and in different parts of the network, different routing protocols may be appropriate. In this specification, we consider routing within a single 'PRoPHET zone', which is a set of nodes among which messages are routed using PRoPHET. In many cases, a PRoPHET zone will not span the entire DTN, but there will be other parts of the network with other characteristics that run other routing protocols. To handle this, there may be nodes within the zone that act as gateways to other nodes that are the destinations for bundles generated within the zone or that insert bundles into the zone. Thus, PRoPHET is not necessarily used end-to-end, but only within regions of the network where its use is appropriate. 1.3. PRoPHET as Compared to Regular Routing Protocols While PRoPHET uses a mechanism for pruning the epidemic forwarding tree that is similar to the mechanism used in Metric-based Vector Routing protocols (where the metric might be distance or cost), it should not be confused with a metric vector protocol. In a traditional metric-based vector routing protocol, the information passed from node to node is used to create a single non- looping path from source to destination that is optimal given the metric used. The path consists of a set of directed edges selected from the complete graph of communications links between the network nodes. In PRoPHET, that information is used to prune the epidemic tree of paths by removing paths that look less likely to provide an effective route for delivery of data to its intended destination. One of the effects of this difference is that the regular notions of split horizon do not apply to PRoPHET. The purpose of split horizon is to prevent a distance vector protocol from ever passing a packet back to the node that sent it the packet because it is well known that the source does not lie in that direction as determined when the directed path was computed. In an epidemic protocol, where that previous system already has the data, the notion of passing the data back to the node is redundant: the protocol can readily determine that such a transfer is not required. Further, given the mobility and constant churn of encounters possible in a DTN that is dominated by opportunistic Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 9] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 encounters, it is quite possible that on a future encounter, that node might have become a better option for reaching the destination. Such a later encounter may require a re-transfer of the data if resource constraints have resulted in the data being deleted from the original carrier between the encounters. The logic of metric routing protocols does not map directly onto the family of epidemic protocols. In particular it is inappropriate to try to assess such protocols against the criteria used to assess conventional routing protocols such as the metric vector protocols; this is not to say that the family of epidemic protocols do not have weaknesses but they have to be considered independently of traditional protocols. 1.4. Requirements notation The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119. Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 10] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 2. Architecture 2.1. PRoPHET This section presents an overview of the main architecture of PRoPHET, a Probabilistic Routing Protocol using History of Encounters and Transitivity. The protocol leverages the observations made on the non-randomness of mobility patterns present in many application scenarios to improve routing performance. Instead of doing blind epidemic replication of bundles through the network as previous protocols have done, it applies 'probabilistic routing'. To accomplish this, a metric called 'delivery predictability', 0 <= P_(A,B) <= 1, is established at every node A for each known destination B. This metric is calculated so that a node with a higher value for a certain destination is estimated to be a better candidate for delivering a bundle to that destination (i.e., if P_(A,B)>P_(C,B), bundles for destination B are preferable to forward to A rather than C). It is later used when making forwarding decisions. As routes in a DTN are likely to be asymmetric, the calculation of the delivery predictability reflects this, and P_(A,B) may be different from P_(B,A). The delivery predictability values in each node evolve over time both as a result of decay of the metrics between encounters between nodes and due to changes resulting from encounters when metric information for the encountered node is updated to reflect the encounter and metric information about other nodes is exchanged. When two PRoPHET nodes have a communication opportunity, they first exchange the delivery predictabilities for all destinations known by the nodes. This information is used by the nodes to update the internal delivery predictability vector as described below. After that, the nodes exchange information (including destination and size) about the bundles each node carries and the information is used in conjunction with the updated delivery predictabilities to decide which bundles to request to be forwarded from the other node based on the forwarding strategy used (as discussed in Section 2.1.3). 2.1.1. Delivery Predictability Calculation As stated above, PRoPHET relies on calculating a metric based on the probability of encountering a certain node, and using that to support the decision of whether or not to forward a bundle to a certain node. This section describes the operations performed on the metrics stored in a node when it encounters another node and a communications opportunity arises. In the operations described by the equations that follow, the updates are being performed by node A, P_(A,B) is Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 11] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 the delivery predictability value that node A will have stored for the destination B after the encounter and P_(A,B)_old is the corresponding value that was stored before the encounter. If no delivery predictability value is stored for a particular destination B, P_(A,B) is considered to be zero. As a special case, the metric value for a node itself is always defined to be 1 (i.e., P_(A,A)=1). The equations use a number of parameters that can be selected to match the characteristics of the mobility pattern in the PRoPHET zone where the node is located. Recommended settings for the various parameters are given in Section 3.3. The impact on the evolution of delivery predictabilities if encountering nodes have different parameter setting is discussed in Section 2.1.1.1. The calculation of the updates to the delivery predictabilities during an encounter has three parts. When two nodes meet, the first thing they do is to update the delivery predictability for each other, so that nodes that are often encountered have a high delivery predictability. If node B has not met node A for a long time or has never met node B, such that P_(A,B) < P_first_threshold, then P_(A,B) should be set to P_encounter_first. Because PRoPHET generally has no prior knowledge about whether this is an encounter that will be repeated relatively frequently or one that will be a rare event, P_encounter_first SHOULD be set to 0.5 unless the node has extra information obtained other than through the PRoPHET protocol about the likelihood of future encounters. Otherwise, P_(A,B) should be calculated as shown in Equation 1, where 0 <= P_encounter <= 1 is a scaling constant setting the rate at which the predictability increases on encounters after the first and delta is a small positive number that effectively sets an upper bound for P_(A,B). The limit is set so that predictabilities between different nodes stay strictly less than 1. The value of delta should normally be very small (e.g., 0.01) so as not to significantly restrict the range of available predictabilities, but can be chosen to make calculations efficient where this is important. P_(A,B) = P_(A,B)_old + ( 1 - delta - P_(A,B)_old ) * P_encounter (1) If a pair of nodes do not encounter each other during an interval, they are less likely to be good forwarders of bundles to each other, thus the delivery predictability values must age, being reduced in the process. The second part of the updates of the metric values is application of the aging equation shown in Equation 2, where 0 <= gamma <= 1 is the aging constant, and K is the number of time Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 12] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 units that have elapsed since the last time the metric was aged. The time unit used can differ, and should be defined based on the application and the expected delays in the targeted network. P_(A,B) = P_(A,B)_old * gamma^K (2) The delivery predictabilities are aged according to Equation 2 before being passed to an encountered node so that they reflect the time that has passed since the node had its last encounter with any other node. The delivery predictability also has a transitive property, that is based on the observation that if node A frequently encounters node B, and node B frequently encounters node C, then node C probably is a good node to forward bundles destined for node A to. Equation 3 shows how this transitivity affects the delivery predictability, where 0 <= beta <= 1 is a scaling constant that controls how large an impact the transitivity should have on the delivery predictability. P_(A,C) = MAX( P_(A,C)_old, P_(A,B) * P_(B,C)_recv * beta ) (3) Node A uses Equation 3 and the metric values received from the encountered node B (e.g., P_(B,C)_recv) in the third part of updating the metric values stored in node A. 2.1.1.1. Impact of Encounters Between Nodes with Different Parameter Settings The various parameters used in the three equations described in Section 2.1.1 are set independently in each node and it is therefore possible that encounters may take place between nodes that have been configured with different values of the parameters. This section considers whether this could be problematic for the operation of PRoPHET in that zone. It is desirable that all the nodes operating in a PRoPHET zone should use closely matched values of the parameters and that the parameters should be set to values that are appropriate for the operating zone. More details of how to select appropriate values are given in Section 3.3. Using closely matched values means that delivery predictabilities will evolve in the same way in each node leading to consistent decision making about the bundles that should be exchanged during encounters. Before going on to consider the impact of reasonable but different settings, it should be noted that malicious nodes can use inappropriate settings of the parameters to disrupt delivery of bundles in a PRoPHET zone as described in Section 6. Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 13] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 Firstly and importantly, use of different, but legitimate, settings in encountering nodes will not cause problems in the protocol itself. Apart from P_encounter_first, the other parameters control the rate of change of the the metric values or limit the range of valid values that will be stored in a node. None of the calculations in a node will be invalidated or result in illegal values if the metric values received from another node had been calculated using different parameters. Simulation work indicates that the update calculations are quite stable in the face of changes to the rate parameters, so that minor discrepancies will not have a major impact on the performance of the protocol. The protocol is explicitly designed to deal with situations where there are random factors in the opportunistic nature of node encounters and this randomness dominates over the discrepancies in the parameters. More major discrepancies may lead to sub-optimal behavior of the protocol as certain paths might be more preferred or more deprecated inappropriately. However, since the protocol overall is epidemic in nature, this would not generally lead to non-delivery of bundles as they would also be passed to other nodes and would still be delivered though possibly not on the optimal path. 2.1.2. Optional Delivery Predictability Optimizations 2.1.2.1. Smoothing To give the delivery predictability a smoother rate of change, a node MAY apply one of the following methods to smooth the metric: 1. Keep a list of NUM_P (the recommended value is 4, which has been shown in simulations to give a good trade off between smoothness and rate of response to changes) values for each destination instead of only a single value. The list is held in order of acquisition. When a delivery predictability is updated, the value at the 'newest' position in the list is used as input to the equations in Section 2.1.1. The oldest value in the list is then discarded and the new value is written in the 'newest' position of the list. When a delivery predictability value is needed (either for sending to a peering PRoPHET node, or for making a forwarding decision), the average of the values in the list is calculated, and that value is then used. If less than NUM_P values have been entered into the list, only the positions that have been filled should be used for the averaging. 2. In addition to keeping the delivery predictability as described in Section 2.1.1, a node MAY also keep an exponential weighted Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 14] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 moving average (EWMA) of the delivery predictability. The EWMA is then used for making forwarding decisions and to report to peering nodes, but the value calculated according to Section 2.1.1 is still used as input to the calculations of new delivery predictabilities. The EWMA is calculated according to Equation 4, where 0 <= alpha <= 1 is the weight of the most current value. P_ewma = P_ewma_old * (1 - alpha) + P * alpha (4) The appropriate choice of alpha may vary depending on application scenario circumstances. Unless prior knowledge of the scenario is available, it is suggested that alpha is set to 0.5. 2.1.2.2. Removal of Low Delivery Predictabilities To reduce the data to be transferred between two nodes, a node MAY treat delivery predictabilities smaller than epsilon, where epsilon is a small number, as if they were zero, and thus they do not need to be included in the list sent during the information exchange phase. If this optimization is used, care must be taken to select epsilon to be smaller than delivery predictability values normally present in the network for destinations for which this node is a forwarder. It is possible that epsilon could be calculated based on delivery predictability ranges and the amount they change historically, but this has not been investigated yet. 2.1.3. Forwarding Strategies and Queueing Policies In traditional routing protocols, choosing where to forward a message is usually a simple task; the message is sent to the neighbor that has the path to the destination with the lowest cost (often the shortest path). Normally the message is also only sent to a single node since the reliability of paths is relatively high. However, in the settings we envision here, things are radically different. The first possibility that must be considered when a bundle arrives at a node is that there might not be a path to the destination available, so the node has to buffer the bundle and upon each encounter with another node, the decision must be made whether or not to transfer a particular bundle. Furthermore, having duplicates of messages (on different nodes, as the bundle offer/request mechanism described in Section 4.3.5 ensures that a node does not receive a bundle it already carries) may also be sensible, as forwarding a bundle to multiple nodes can increase the delivery probability of that bundle. Unfortunately, these decisions are not trivial to make. In some cases it might be sensible to select a fixed threshold and only give Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 15] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 a bundle to nodes that have a delivery predictability over that threshold for the destination of the bundle. On the other hand, when encountering a node with a low delivery predictability, it is not certain that a node with a higher metric will be encountered within reasonable time. Thus, there can also be situations where we might want to be less strict in deciding who to give bundles to. Furthermore, there is the problem of deciding how many nodes to give a certain bundle to. Distributing a bundle to a large number of nodes will of course increase the probability of delivering that particular bundle to its destination, but this comes at the cost of consuming more system resources for bundle storage and possibly reducing the probability of other bundles being delivered. On the other hand, giving a bundle to only a few nodes (maybe even just a single node) will use less system resources, but the probability of delivering a bundle is lower, and the delay incurred high. When resources are constrained, nodes may suffer from storage shortage, and may have to drop bundles before they have been delivered to their destinations. Similarly to when deciding whether or not to forward a bundle, deciding which bundle to drop to still maintain good performance might require different policies in different scenarios. Nodes MAY define their own forwarding strategies and queueing policies that take into account the special conditions applicable to the nodes, and local resource constraints. Some default strategies and policies that should be suitable for most normal operation are defined in Section 3.6 and Section 3.7. 2.2. Bundle Agent to Routing Agent Interface The bundle protocol [RFC5050] introduces the concept of a 'bundle agent' that manages the interface between applications and the 'convergence layers' that provide the transport of bundles between nodes during communication opportunities. This specification extends the bundle agent with a routing agent that controls the actions of the bundle agent during an (opportunistic) communications opportunity. This specification defines the details of the PRoPHET routing agent, but the interface defines a more general interface that is also applicable to alternative routing protocols. To enable the PRoPHET routing agent to operate properly, it must be aware of the bundles stored at the node, and it must also be able to tell the bundle agent of that node to send a bundle to a peering node. Therefore, the bundle agent needs to provide the following interface/functionality to the routing agent: Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 16] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 Get Bundle List Returns a list of the stored bundles and their attributes to the routing agent. Send Bundle Makes the bundle agent send a specified bundle. Accept Bundle Gives the bundle agent a new bundle to store. Bundle Delivered Tells the bundle agent that a bundle was delivered to its destination. Drop Bundle Advice Advises the bundle agent that a specified bundle should not be offered for forwarding in future and may be dropped by the bundle agent if appropriate. Route Import Can be used by a gateway node in a PRoPHET zone to import reachability information about EIDs that are external to the PRoPHET zone. Translation functions dependent on the external routing protocol will be used to set the appropriate delivery predictabilities for imported destinations as described in Section 2.3. Route Export Can be used by a gateway node in a PRoPHET zone to export reachability information (destination EIDs and corresponding delivery predictabilities) for use by routing protocols in other parts of the DTN. 2.3. PRoPHET Zone Gateways PRoPHET is designed to handle routing primarily within a "PRoPHET zone," i.e. a set of nodes that all implement the PRoPHET routing scheme. However, since we recognise that a PRoPHET routing zone is unlikely to encompass an entire DTN, there may be nodes within the zone that act as gateways to other nodes that are the destinations for bundles generated within the zone or that insert bundles into the zone. PRoPHET MAY elect to export and import routes across a bundle agent interface. The delivery predictability to use for routes that are imported depends on the routing protocol used to manage those routes. If a translation function between the external routing protocol and PRoPHET exists, it SHOULD be used to set the delivery predictability. Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 17] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 If no such translation function exists, the delivery predictability SHOULD be set to 1. For those routes that are exported, the current delivery predictability will be exported with the route. 2.4. Lower Layer Requirements and Interface PRoPHET can be run on a large number of underlying networking technologies. To accommodate its operation on all kinds of lower layers, it requires the lower layers to provide the following functionality and interfaces. Neighbor discovery and maintenance A PRoPHET node needs to know the identity of its neighbors and when new neighbors appear and old neighbors disappear. Some wireless networking technologies might already contain mechanisms for detecting neighbors and maintaining this state. To avoid redundancies and inefficiencies, neighbor discovery is thus not included as a part of PRoPHET, but PRoPHET relies on such mechanism in lower layers. The lower layers MUST provide the two functions listed below. If the underlying networking technology does not support such services, a simple neighbor discovery scheme using local broadcasts of beacon messages could be run in-between PRoPHET and the underlying layer. An example of a simple neighbor discovery mechanism that could be used is shown in Appendix B. New Neighbor Signals to the PRoPHET agent that a new node has become a neighbor. A neighbor is here defined as another node that is currently within communication range of the wireless networking technology in use. The PRoPHET agent should now start the Hello procedure as described in Section 5.2. Neighbor Gone Signals to the PRoPHET agent that one of its neighbors have left. Local Address An address used by the underlying communication layer (e.g. an IP or MAC address) that identifies the sender address of the current message. This address must be unique among the nodes that can currently communicate, and is only used in conjunction with the Instance numbers to identify a communicating pair of nodes as described in Section 4.1. This address and its format is dependent on the convergence layer that is being used by the bundle layer. Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 18] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 3. Protocol Overview 3.1. Neighbor Awareness Since the operation of the protocol is dependent on the encounters of nodes running PRoPHET, the nodes must be able to detect when a new neighbor is present. The protocol may be run on several different networking technologies, and as some of them might already have methods available for detecting neighbors, PRoPHET does not include a mechanism for neighbor discovery. Instead, it requires the underlying layer to provide a mechanism to notify the protocol of when neighbors appear and disappear as described in Section 2.4. When a new neighbor has been detected, the protocol starts to set up a link with that node through the Hello message exchange as described in Section 5.2. Once the link has been set up the protocol may continue to the Information Exchange Phase (see Section 3.2). Once this has been completed the nodes will normally recalculate the delivery predictabilities using the equations and mechanisms described in Section 2.1.1 and Section 2.1.2. If the nodes have already done this exchange within a time interval shorter than, say, 5% of the characteristic intercontact time expected, the nodes MAY omit this recalculation phase depending on the characteristics of the communications mechanism and expected node behavior in the PRoPHET zone. For example mobile nodes communicating with each other using Wi-Fi ad hoc mode may produce apparent multiple encounters with a short interval between them but these are frequently due to artifacts of the underlying physical network when using wireless connections, where transmission problems or small changes in location may result in repeated reconnections. Treating such multiple reconnections as new encounters can give an inappropriate view of the real probability that the two nodes will encounter each other in the future and updating the predictabilities repeatedly will mirror this inappropriate view in the predictability values, which should be avoided. On the other hand there may be some networks where it is desirable to update predictabilities after every encounter. Also if one or other of the nodes has encountered a third node in the meantime it MAY be appropriate to carry out the exchange even though there has only been a short interval between encounters. Nodes can agree to suppress the recalculation phase but it MUST be carried out if one or other node does not request suppression. 3.2. Information Exchange Phase The first step in the Information Exchange Phase is for the protocol to send a Routing Information Base Dictionary TLV to the node it is peering with. This is a dictionary of the Endpoint Identifiers Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 19] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 (EIDs) of the nodes that will be listed in the Routing Information Base. After this, a Routing Information Base TLV is sent. This TLV contains a list of the EIDs that the node has knowledge of, and the corresponding delivery predictabilities for those nodes, and flags describing the capabilities of the sending node. Upon reception of this TLV, the node updates its delivery predictability table according to the equations in Section 2.1.1, and using its forwarding strategy (see Section 2.1.3) determines which of its stored bundles it wishes to offer the peering node. After making this decision, a Bundle Offer TLV is prepared, listing the bundle identifiers and their destinations for all bundles it wishes to offer the other node. If the Bundle Offer TLV lists a bundle for which the destination was not included in the first Routing Information Base Dictionary TLV sent, a new such TLV is sent first with an incremental update of the dictionary. When the peering node has a dictionary with all necessary EIDs, the Bundle Offer TLV is sent to it. The Bundle Offer TLV also contains a list of PRoPHET ACKs (see Section 3.5). This phase of the protocol is described in more detail in Section 5.3. When a new bundle arrives at a node, the node MAY inspect its list of available neighbors, and if one of them is a candidate to forward the bundle, a new Bundle Offer TLV MAY be sent to that node. If two nodes remain connected over a longer period of time, the Information Exchange Phase will be periodically re-initiated when the WAIT_INFO timer expires to allow new delivery predictability information to be spread through the network and new bundle exchanges to take place. 3.2.1. Routing Information Base Dictionary To reduce the overhead of the protocol, the Routing Information Base and Bundle Offer/Request TLVs utilize an EID dictionary. This dictionary maps long variable length EIDs as defined in [RFC4838] to shorter SDNV (see Section 4.1. of RFC 5050 [RFC5050]) identifiers that are used in place of the EIDs in subsequent TLVs. The dictionary established only persist through a single encounter with a node (while the same link set up by the Hello procedure, with the same instance numbers, remains). 3.3. Routing Algorithm The basic routing algorithm of the protocol is described in Section 2.1. The algorithm uses some parameter values in the calculation of the delivery predictability metric. These parameters are configurable depending on the usage scenario, but Figure 2 provides some recommended default values. A brief explanation of the parameters is given below. Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 20] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 P_encounter P_encounter is used to increase the delivery predictability for a destination when the destination node is encountered. A larger value of P_encounter will increase the delivery predictability faster and fewer encounters will be required for the delivery predictability to reach a certain level. Given that relative rather than absolute delivery predictability values are what is interesting for the forwarding mechanisms defined, the protocol is very robust to different values of P_encounter as long as the same value is chosen for all nodes. In order to reduce the effect of spurious encounters, a lower value, P_encounter_first, is used when a node is encountered for the first time, or when the last encounter was sufficiently long ago so that the delivery predictability for that node has decayed to a value below the threshold P_first_threshold. We have found the values given in the table below to be suitable. alpha The alpha parameter is used in the optional smoothing of the delivery predictabilities described in Section 2.1.2.1. It is used to determine the weight of the most current P-value in the calculation of an EWMA. beta The beta parameter adjusts the weight of the transitive property of PRoPHET, that is, how much consideration should be given to information about destinations that is received from encountered nodes. If beta is set to zero, the transitive property of PRoPHET will not be active and only direct encounters will be used in the calculation of the delivery predictability. The higher the value of beta the more rapidly encounters will increase predictabilities through the transitive rule. gamma The gamma parameter determines how quickly delivery predictabilities age. A lower value of gamma will cause the delivery predictability to age faster. The value of gamma should be chosen according to the scenario and environment in which the protocol will be used. If encounters are expected to be very frequent, a lower value should be chosen for gamma than if encounters are expected to be rare. To set an appropriate gamma value, one should consider the 'average expected delivery' time T_aed in the PRoPHET zone where the protocol is to be used, and the time unit used (the resolution with which the delivery predictability is being updated). The T_aed time interval can be estimated according to the average number of hops that bundles have to pass and average encounter frequency. Clearly if bundles Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 21] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 have a Time To Live (TTL) that is less than T_aed they are unlikely to survive in the network to be delivered to a node in this PRoPHET zone, but the TTL for bundles created in nodes in this zone should not be chosen solely on this basis because they may pass through other networks. After estimating T_aed and selecting how much we want the delivery predictability to age in one T_aed time period (call this A), we can calculate the number of time unit in one T_aed as K=T_aed/timeunit. This can then be used to calculate gamma as gamma=Kth-root(A). These instructions on how to set gamma are only given as a possible method for selecting an appropriate value, but network operators are free to set gamma as they choose. Recommended starting parameter values when specific network measurements have not been done are below. Note: there are no "one size fits all" default values and the ideal values vary based on network characteristics. It is not inherently necessary for the parameter values to be identical at all nodes, but it is recommended that similar values are used at all nodes within a PRoPHET zone as discussed in Section 2.1.1.1. +========================================+ | Parameter | Recommended value | +========================================+ | P_encounter | 0.5 | +----------------------------------------+ | P_encounter_first | 0.5 | +----------------------------------------+ | P_first_threshold | 0.1 | +----------------------------------------+ | alpha | 0.5 | +----------------------------------------+ | beta | 0.9 | +----------------------------------------+ | gamma | 0.999 | +----------------------------------------+ | delta | 0.01 | +========================================+ Figure 2: Default parameter settings Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 22] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 3.4. Bundle Passing Upon reception of the Bundle Offer TLV, the node inspects the list of bundles and decides which bundles it is willing to store for future forwarding, or that it is able to deliver to their destination. This decision has to be made using local policies and considering parameters such as available buffer space. For each such acceptable bundle, the node sends a Bundle Request TLV to its peering node, which in response to that sends the requested bundle. If a node has some bundles it would prefer to receive ahead of others offered (e.g. bundles that it can deliver to their final destination), it MAY request the bundles in that priority order. This is often desirable as there is no guarantee that the nodes will remain in contact with each other for long enough to transfer all the acceptable bundles. Otherwise, the node SHOULD assume that the bundles are listed in a priority order determined by the peering node's forwarding strategy, and request bundles in that order. 3.4.1. Custody To free up local resources, a node may give custody of a bundle to another node that offers custody. This is done to move the retransmission requirement further toward the destination. The concept of custody transfer, and more details on the motivation for its use can be found in [RFC4838]. PRoPHET takes no responsibilities for making custody decisions. Such decisions should be made by a higher layer. 3.5. When a Bundle Reaches its Destination When a bundle reaches its destination within the PRoPHET zone (i.e., within the part of the network where PRoPHET is used for routing; not necessarily the final destination of the bundle), a PRoPHET ACK for that bundle is issued. A PRoPHET ACK is a confirmation that a bundle has been delivered to its destination in the PRoPHET zone (bundles might traverse several different types of networks using different routing protocols; thus, this might not be the final destination of the bundle). When nodes exchange Bundle Offer TLVs, bundles that have been ACKed are also listed, having the "PRoPHET ACK" flag set. The node that receives this list updates its own list of ACKed bundles to be the union of its previous list and the received list. To prevent the list of ACKed bundles growing indefinitely, each PRoPHET ACK should have a timeout that MUST NOT be longer than the timeout of the bundle to which the ACK corresponds. When a node receives a PRoPHET ACK for a bundle it is carrying, it MAY delete that bundle from its storage, unless the node holds custody of that bundle. The PRoPHET ACK only indicates that a bundle Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 23] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 has been delivered to its destination within the PRoPHET zone, so the reception of a PRoPHET ACK is not a guarantee that the bundle has been delivered to its final destination. Nodes MAY keep track of which nodes they have sent PRoPHET ACKs for certain bundles to, and MAY in that case refrain from sending multiple PRoPHET ACKs for the same bundle to the same node. If necessary in order to preserve system resources, nodes MAY drop PRoPHET ACKs prematurely, but SHOULD refrain from doing so if possible. It is important to keep in mind that PRoPHET ACKs and bundle ACKs[RFC5050] are different things. PRoPHET ACKs are only valid within the PRoPHET part of the network, while bundle ACKs are end-to- end acknowledgments that may go outside of the PRoPHET network. 3.6. Forwarding Strategies During the information exchange phase, nodes need to decide on which bundles they wish to exchange with the peering node. Because of the large number of scenarios and environments that PRoPHET can be used in, and because of the wide range of devices that may be used, it is not certain that this decision will be based on the same strategy in every case. Therefore, each node uses a _forwarding strategy_ to make this decision. Nodes may define their own strategies, but this section defines a few basic forwarding strategies that nodes can use. Note: If the node being encountered is the destination of any of the bundles being carried, those bundles SHOULD be offered to the destination, even if that would violate the forwarding strategy. Some of the forwarding strategies listed here have been evaluated (together with a number of queueing policies) through simulations, and more information about that and recommendations on which strategies to use in different situations can be found in [lindgren_06]. If not chosen differently due to the characteristics of the deployment scenario, nodes SHOULD choose GRTR as the default forwarding strategy. The short names applied to the Forwarding Strategies should be read as mnemonic handles rather as specific acronyms for any set of words in the specification. We use the following notation in our descriptions below. A and B are the nodes that encounter each other, and the strategies are described as they would be applied by node A. The destination node is D. P_(X,Y) denotes the delivery predictability stored at node X for destination Y, and NF is the number of times A has given the bundle to some other node. Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 24] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 GRTR Forward the bundle only if P_(B,D) > P_(A,D). When two nodes meet, a bundle is sent to the other node if the delivery predictability of the destination of the bundle is higher at the other node. The first node does not delete the bundle after sending it as long as there is sufficient buffer space available (since it might encounter a better node, or even the final destination of the bundle in the future). GTMX Forward the bundle only if P_(B,D) > P_(A,D) && NF < NF_max. This strategy is like the previous one, but each bundle is given to at most NF_max other nodes apart from the destination. GTHR Forward the bundle only if P_(B,D) > P_(A,D) OR P_(B,D) > FORW_thres, where FORW_thres is a threshold value, above which a bundle should always be given to the node unless it is already present at the other node. This strategy is similar to GRTR, but among nodes with very high delivery predictability, bundles for that particular destination are spread epidemically. GRTR+ Forward the bundle only if Equation 5 holds, where P_max is the largest delivery predictability reported by a node to which the bundle has been sent so far. P_(B,D) > P_(A,D) && P_(B,D) > P_max (5) This strategy is like GRTR, but nodes keep track of the largest delivery predictability of any node it has forwarded this bundle to, and only forward the bundle again if the currently encountered node has a greater delivery predictability than the maximum previously encountered. GTMX+ Forward the bundle only if Equation 6 holds. P_(B,D) > P_(A,D) && P_(B,D) > P_max && NF < NF_max (6) Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 25] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 This strategy is like GTMX, but nodes keep track of P_max as in GRTR+. GRTRSort Select bundles in descending order of the value of P_(B,D) - P_(A,D). Forward the bundle only if P_(B,D) > P_(A,D). This strategy is like GRTR, but instead of just going through the bundle queue linearly, this strategy looks at the difference in delivery predictabilities for each bundle between the two nodes, and forwards the bundles with the largest difference first. As bandwidth limitations or disrupted connections may result in not all bundles that would be desirable being exchanged, it could be desirable to first send bundles that get a large improvement in delivery predictability. GRTRMax Select bundles in descending order of P_(B,D). Forward the bundle only if P_(B,D) > P_(A,D). This strategy begins by considering the bundles for which the encountered node has the highest delivery predictability. The motivation for doing this is the same as in GRTRSort, but based on the idea that it is better to give bundles to nodes with high absolute delivery predictabilities, instead of trying to maximize the improvement. 3.7. Queueing Policies Because of limited buffer resources, nodes may need to drop some bundles. As is the case with the forwarding strategies, which bundle to drop is also dependent on the scenario. Therefore, each node also has a queueing policy that determines how its bundle queue is handled. This section defines a few basic queueing policies, but nodes MAY use other policies if desired. Some of the queueing policies listed here have been evaluated (together with a number of forwarding strategies) through simulations. More information about that and recommendations on which policies to use in different situations can be found in [lindgren_06]. If not chosen differently due to the characteristics of the deployment scenario, nodes SHOULD choose FIFO as the default queueing policy. The short names applied to the Queueing Policies should be read as mnemonic handles rather as specific acronyms for any set of words in the specification. Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 26] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 FIFO Handle the queue in a First In First Out (FIFO) order. The bundle that was first entered into the queue is the first bundle to be dropped. MOFO - Evict most forwarded first In an attempt to maximize the delivery rate of bundles, this policy requires that the routing agent keeps track of the number of times each bundle has been forwarded to some other node. The bundle that has been forwarded the largest number of times is the first to be dropped. MOPR - Evict most favorably forwarded first Keep a variable FAV for each bundle in the queue, initialized to zero. Each time the bundle is forwarded, update FAV according to Equation 7, where P is the predictability metric the node the bundle is forwarded to has for its destination. FAV_new = FAV_old + ( 1 - FAV_old ) * P (7) The bundle with the highest FAV value is the first to be dropped. Linear MOPR - Evict most favorably forwarded first; linear increase Keep a variable FAV for each bundle in the queue, initialized to zero. Each time the bundle is forwarded, update FAV according to Equation 8, where P is the predictability metric the node the bundle is forwarded to has for its destination. FAV_new = FAV_old + P (8) The bundle with the highest FAV value is the first to be dropped. SHLI - Evict shortest life time first As described in [RFC5050], each bundle has a timeout value specifying when it no longer is meaningful to its application and should be deleted. Since bundles with short remaining time to life will soon be dropped anyway, this policy decides to drop the bundle with the shortest remaining life time first. To successfully use a policy like this, there needs to be some form of time synchronization between nodes so that it is possible to know the exact lifetimes of bundles. This is however not specific to this routing protocol, but a more general DTN problem. Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 27] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 LEPR - Evict least probable first Since the node is least likely to deliver a bundle for which it has a low delivery predictability, drop the bundle for which the node has the lowest delivery predictability, and that has been forwarded at least MF times, which is a minimum number of forwards that a bundle must have been forwarded before being dropped (if such a bundle exists). More than one queueing policy MAY be combined in an ordered set, where the first policy is used primarily, the second only being used if there is a need to tie-break between bundles given the same eviction priority by the primary policy, and so on. As an example, one could select the queueing policy to be {MOFO; SHLI; FIFO}, which would start by dropping the bundle that has been forwarded the largest number of times. If more than one bundle has been forwarded the same number of times, the one with the shortest remaining life time will be dropped, and if that also is the same, the FIFO policy will be used to drop the bundle first received. It is worth noting that obviously nodes MUST NOT drop bundles for which it has custody unless the lifetime expires. Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 28] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 4. Message Formats This section defines the message formats of the PRoPHET routing protocol. In order to allow for variable length fields, many numeric fields are encoded as Self-Delimiting Numeric Values (SDNVs). The format of SDNVs is defined in [RFC5050]. 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | | ~ Header ~ | | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | | ~ TLV 1 ~ | | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | . | ~ . ~ | . | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | | ~ TLV n ~ | | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ Figure 3: Basic message format Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 29] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 4.1. Header 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ |Protocol Number|Version| Flags | Result | Code | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Receiver Instance | Sender Instance | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Transaction Identifier | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ |S| SubMessage Number | Length (SDNV) | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | | ~ Message Body ~ | | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ Figure 4: Header Protocol Number The DTN Routing Protocol Number encoded as 8 bit unsigned integer in network bit order. The value of this field is 0. The PRoPHET header is organized in this way so that in principle PRoPHET messages could be sent as the Protocol Data Unit of an IP packet if an IP protocol number was allocated for PRoPHET. At present PRoPHET is only specified to use a TCP transport for carriage of PRoPHET packets so that the protocol number serves only to identify the PRoPHET protocol within DTN. Transmitting PRoPHET packets directly as an IP protocol on a public IP network such as the Internet would generally not work well because middle boxes such as firewalls and NAT boxes would be unlikely to allow the protocol to pass through and the protocol does not provide any congestion control. However it could be so used on private networks for experimentation. Also in future other protocols that require transmission of metadata between DTN nodes could potentially use the same format and protocol state machinery but with a different Protocol Number. Version The Version of the PRoPHET Protocol. Encoded as a four bit unsigned integer in network bit order. This document defines version 2. Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 30] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 Flags Reserved Result Field that is used to indicate whether a response is required to the request message if the outcome is successful. A value of "NoSuccessAck" indicates that the request message does not expect a response if the outcome is successful, and a value of "AckAll" indicates that a response is expected if the outcome is successful. In both cases a failure response MUST be generated if the request fails. In a response message, the result field can have two values: "Success," and "Failure". The "Success" results indicates a success response. All messages that belong to the same success response will have the same Transaction Identifier. The "Success" result indicates a success response that may be contained in a single message or the final message of a success response spanning multiple messages. ReturnReceipt is a result field used to indicate that an acknowledgement is required for the message. The default for Messages is that the controller will not acknowledge responses. In the case where an acknowledgement is required, it will set the Result Field to ReturnReceipt in the header of the Message. The result field is encoded as an 8 bit unsigned integer in network bit order. The following values are currently defined: NoSuccessAck: Result = 1 AckAll: Result = 2 Success: Result = 3 Failure: Result = 4 ReturnReceipt Result = 5 Code Field gives further information concerning the result in a response message. It is mostly used to pass an error code in a failure response but can also be used to give further information in a success response message or an event message. In a request message, the code field is not used and is set to zero. If the Code field indicates that the Error TLV is included in the message, further information on the error will be found in the Error TLV, which MUST be the the first TLV after the header. Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 31] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 The Code field is encoded as an 8 bit unsigned integer in network bit order. The following value ranges are defined: PRoPHET Error Messages 0x00 - 0x99 Reserved 0xA0 - 0xFE Error TLV in message 0xFF Sender Instance For messages during the Hello phase with the Hello SYN, Hello SYNACK, and Hello ACK functions (which are explained in Section 5.2), it is the sender's instance number for the link. It is used to detect when the link comes back up after going down or when the identity of the entity at the other end of the link changes. The instance number is a 16-bit number that is guaranteed to be unique within the recent past and to change when the link or node comes back up after going down. Zero is not a valid instance number. For the RSTACK function (also explained in detail in Section 5.2), the Sender Instance field is set to the value of the Receiver Instance field from the incoming message that caused the RSTACK function to be generated. Messages sent after the Hello phase is completed should use the sender's instance number for the link. The Sender Instance is encoded as an unsigned integer in network bit order. Receiver Instance For messages during the Hello phase with the Hello SYN, Hello SYNACK, and Hello ACK functions, is what the sender believes is the current instance number for the link, allocated by the entity at the far end of the link. If the sender of the message does not know the current instance number at the far end of the link, this field SHOULD be set to zero. For the RSTACK message, the Receiver Instance field is set to the value of the Sender Instance field from the incoming message that caused the RSTACK message to be generated. Messages sent after the Hello phase is completed should use what the sender believes is the current instance number for the link, allocated by the entity at the far end of the link. The Sender Instance is encoded as a 16-bit unsigned integer in network bit order. Transaction Identifier Used to associate a message with its response message. This should be set in request messages to a value that is unique for the sending host within the recent past. Reply messages contain the Transaction Identifier of the request they are responding to. The Transaction Identifier is a 32-bit bit pattern. Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 32] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 S-flag If S is set (value 1) then the SubMessage Number field indicates the total number of SubMessage segments that compose the entire message. If it is not set (value 0) then the SubMessage Number field indicates the sequence number of this SubMessage segment within the whole message. the S field will only be set in the first sub-message of a sequence. SubMessage Number When a message is segmented because it exceeds the MTU of the link layer, each segment will include a SubMessage Number to indicate its position. Alternatively, if it is the first sub- message in a sequence of sub-messages, the S flag will be set and this field will contain the total count of SubMessage segments. The SubMessage Number is encoded as a 15-bit unsigned integer in network byte order Length Length in octets of this message including headers and message body. If the message is fragmented, this field contains the length of this SubMessage. The Length is encoded as an SDNV. The protocol also requires extra information about the link that the underlying communication layer MUST provide. This information is used in the Hello procedure described in more detail in Section 5.2. Since this information is available from the underlying layer, there is no need to carry it in PRoPHET messages. The following values are defined to be provided by the underlying layer: Sender Local Address An address used by the underlying communication layer as described in Section 2.4 that identifies the sender address of the current message. This address must be unique among the nodes that can currently communicate, and is only used in conjunction with the Receiver Local Address and the Receiver Instance and Sender Instance to identify a communicating pair of nodes. Receiver Local Address An address used by the underlying communication layer as described in Section 2.4 that identifies the receiver address of the current message. This address must be unique among the nodes that can currently communicate, and is only used in conjunction with the Sender Local Address and the Receiver Instance and Sender Instance to identify a communicating pair of nodes. When PRoPHET is run over TCP, the IP addresses of the communicating Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 33] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 nodes are used as Sender and Receiver Local Addresses. 4.2. TLV Structure All TLVs have the following format, and can be nested. 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | TLV Type | TLV Flags | TLV Length (SDNV) | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | | ~ TLV Data ~ | | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ Figure 5: TLV Format TLV Type Specific TLVs are defined in Section 4.3. The TLV Type is encoded as an 8 bit unsigned integer in network bit order. Each TLV will have fields defined that are specific to the function of that TLV. TLV Flags These are defined per TLV type. Flag n corresponds to bit 15-n in the TLV. TLV Length Length of the TLV in octets, including the TLV header and any nested TLVs. Encoded as an SDNV. 4.3. TLVs 4.3.1. Hello TLV The Hello TLV is used to set up and maintain a link between two PRoPHET nodes. Hello messages with the SYN function are transmitted periodically as beacons. The Hello TLV is the first TLV exchanged between two PRoPHET nodes when they encounter each other. No other TLVs can be exchanged until the first Hello sequence is completed. Once a communication link is established between two PRoPHET nodes, the Hello TLV will be sent once for each interval as defined in the interval timer. If a node experiences the lapse of HELLO_DEAD Hello intervals without receiving a Hello TLV on an ESTAB connection (as defined in the state machine in Section 5.2), the connection SHOULD Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 34] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 be assumed broken. 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | TLV Type=0x01 | Hello Function| TLV Length | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Timer (SDNV) |EID Length,SDNV| Sender EID (variable length) | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ Figure 6: Hello TLV Format Hello Function Specifies the function of the Hello TLV. Four main functions are specified for the Hello TLV, as well as one flag to indicate that the information exchange phase can be suppressed (to be used together with either the SYNACK or ACK flag). The functions are encoded as an 8 bit unsigned integer. The encoding of the Hello Function is: SYN: Hello Function = 1 SYNACK: Requesting execution of recalculation phase: Hello Function = 2 Requesting suppression of recalculation phase: Hello Function = 130 ACK: Requesting execution of recalculation phase: Hello Function = 3 Requesting suppression of recalculation phase: Hello Function = 131 RSTACK: Hello Function = 4 If the SYNACK message requests suppression of recalculation (function 130) and the ACK message requests suppression of recalculation (function 131) then recalculation MUST be suppressed. In all other cases recalculation must be done. TLV Data Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 35] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 Timer The Timer field is used to inform the receiver of the timer value used in the Hello processing of the sender. The timer specifies the nominal time between periodic Hello messages. It is a constant for the duration of a session. The timer field is specified in units of 100ms and is encoded as an SDNV. EID Length The EID Length field is used to specify the length of the Sender EID field in octets. If the Endpoint Identifier (EID) has already been sent at least once in a message with the current Sender Instance, a node MAY choose to set this field to zero, omitting the Sender EID from the Hello TLV. The EID Length is encoded as an SDNV and the field is thus of variable length. Sender EID The Sender EID field specifies the DTN endpoint identifier (EID) of the sender that is to be used in updating routing information and making forwarding decisions. If a node has multiple EIDs, one should be chosen for PRoPHET routing. This field is of variable length. 4.3.2. Error TLV 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | TLV type=0x02 | Flags | TLV Length | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | | ~ Data ~ | | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ Figure 7: Error TLV Format TLV Flags Reserved TLV Data Reserved Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 36] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 4.3.3. Routing Information Base Dictionary TLV The Routing Information Base Dictionary includes the list of endpoint identifiers used in making routing decisions. The referents remain constant for the duration of a session over a link where the instance numbers remain the same and can be used by both the Routing Information Base messages and the bundle offer messages. 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | TLV type=0xA0 | Flags | Length | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | RIBD Entry Count (SDNV) | Reserved | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ ~ ~ ~ Variable Length Routing Address Strings ~ ~ ~ +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ Routing Address String +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | String ID 1 (SDNV) | Length (SDNV) | Resv | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ ~ Endpoint Identifier 1 (variable) ~ | | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | . | ~ . ~ | . | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | String ID n (SDNV) | Length (SDNV) | Resv | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | | ~ Endpoint Identifier n (variable) ~ | | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ Figure 8: Routing Information Base Dictionary TLV Flags Reserved Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 37] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 RIBD Entry Count Number of entries in the database. Encoded as SDNV. String ID SDNV identifier that is constant for the duration of a session. String ID zero is predefined as the node initiating the session through sending the Hello SYN message, and String ID one is predefined as the node responding with the Hello SYNACK message. Length Length of Address String. Encoded as SDNV. 4.3.4. Routing Information Base TLV The Routing Information Base lists the destinations (endpoints) a node knows of, and the delivery predictabilities it has associated with them. This information is needed by the PRoPHET algorithm to make decisions on routing and forwarding. 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | TLV Type=0xA1 | Flags | Length | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | RIB String Count (SDNV) | Reserved | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | RIBD String ID 1 (SDNV) | P-Value | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | RIB Flags 1 | . ~ +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ . ~ ~ . ~ ~ . ~ ~ . ~ +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | RIBD String ID n (SDNV) | P-Value | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | RIB Flags n | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ Figure 9: Routing Information Base Header Flags The encoding of the Header flag field relates to the capabilities of the Source node sending the RIB: Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 38] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 Flag 0: More RIB TLVs 0b1 Flag 1: Reserved 0b1 Flag 2: Reserved 0b1 Flag 3: Reserved 0b1 Flag 4: Reserved 0b1 Flag 5: Reserved 0b1 Flag 6: Reserved 0b1 Flag 7: Reserved 0b1 The "More RIB TLVs" flag is set to 1 if the RIB requires more TLVs to be fully transferred. This flag is set to 0 if this is the final TLV of this RIB. RIB String Count Number of routing entries in the TLV. Encoded as SDNV. RIBD String ID ID string as predefined in the dictionary TLV. Encoded as SDNV. P-value Delivery predictability for the destination of this entry as calculated according to the equations in Section 2.1.1, encoded as a 16-bit unsigned integer. The encoding of this field is a linear mapping from [0,1] to [0, 0xFFFF] (e.g., for a P-value of 0.75, the mapping would be 0.75*65535=49151=0xBFFF; thus the P-value would be encoded as 0xBFFF). RIB Flag The encoding of the RIB flag field is: Flag 0: Reserved 0b1 Flag 1: Reserved 0b1 Flag 2: Reserved 0b1 Flag 3: Reserved 0b1 Flag 4: Reserved 0b1 Flag 5: Reserved 0b1 Flag 6: Reserved 0b1 Flag 7: Reserved 0b1 4.3.5. Bundle Offer and Response TLV After the routing information has been passed, the node will ask the other node to review available bundles and determine which bundles it will accept for relay. The source relay will determine which bundles to offer based on relative delivery predictabilities as explained in Section 3.6. The Bundle Offer TLV also lists the bundles that a PRoPHET acknowledgement has been issued for. Those bundles have the Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 39] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 PRoPHET ACK flag set in their entry in the list. When a node receives a PRoPHET ACK for a bundle, it SHOULD, if possible, signal to the bundle agent that this bundle is no longer required for transmission by PRoPHET. Despite no longer transmitting the bundle, it SHOULD keep an entry of the acknowledged bundle to be able to further propagate the PRoPHET ACK. The Response message is identical to the request message with the exception of the TLV Type field. 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | TLV Type | Flags | Length | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Bundle Offer Count | Reserved | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Bundle Dest String Id 1 (SDNV)| B_flags | resv | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Bundle 1 Creation Timestamp time | | (variable length SDNV) | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Bundle 1 Creation Timestamp sequence number | | (variable length SDNV) | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ ~ . ~ ~ . ~ ~ . ~ +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Bundle Dest String Id n (SDNV)| B_flags | resv | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Bundle n Creation Timestamp time | | (variable length SDNV) | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Bundle n Creation Timestamp sequence number | | (variable length SDNV) | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ Figure 10: Bundle Offer and Response TLV Type The TLV Type for a Bundle Offer is 0xA2. The TLV Type for a Bundle Response is 0xA3. Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 40] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 TLV Flags Reserved Bundle Offer Count Number of bundle offer/response entries. Bundle Dest String Id ID string of the destination of the bundle as predefined in the dictionary TLV. Encoded as SDNV. B-Flags The encoding of the B_Flags are: Flag 0: Bundle Accepted 0b1 Flag 1: Reserved 0b1 Flag 2: Reserved 0b1 Flag 3: Reserved 0b1 Flag 4: Reserved 0b1 Flag 5: Reserved 0b1 Flag 6: Reserved 0b1 Flag 7: PRoPHET ACK 0b1 Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 41] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 5. Detailed Operation In this section, some more details on the operation of PRoPHET is given along with state tables to help in implementing the protocol. 5.1. High Level State Tables This section gives high level state tables for the operation of PRoPHET. The following sections will describe each part of the operation in more detail (including state tables for the internal states of those procedures). The following states are used in the state tables: WAIT_NB This is the state all nodes start in. Nodes remain in this state until they are notified that a new neighbor is available. At that point, the Hello procedure should be started with the new neighbor, and the node move into the HELLO state. It does also needs to remain in the WAIT_NB state to ensure that it can detect new neighbors. This can be handled by creating a new thread or process that enters the HELLO state and takes care of the communication with the new neighbor while the parent remains in WAIT_NB. HELLO Nodes are in the HELLO state from when a new neighbor is detected until the Hello procedure is completed and a link is established (which happens when the Hello procedure enters the ESTAB state as described in Section 5.2 - during this procedure, the states ESTAB, SYNSENT, and SYNRCVD will be used, but those are internal to the Hello procedure and are not listed here). If the node is notified that the neighbor is no longer in range before a link has been established, it returns to the WAIT_NB state. INFO_EXCH After a link has been set up by the Hello procedure, a node enters the INFO_EXCH state where the information exchange and bundle passing is done. The node remains in this state as long as Information Exchange Phase TLVs (Routing RIB, Routing RIB Dictionary) and bundle passing TLVs (Bundle Offer, Bundle Request) are being received. When an empty Bundle Request TLV (i.e., no more bundles to send) is received, the node starts a timer and enters the WAIT_INFO state. If the node is notified that the neighbor is no longer in range before all information and bundles have been exchanged, it returns to the WAIT_NB state. Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 42] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 WAIT_INFO Nodes enter the WAIT_INFO state after a completed Information Exchange Phase and bundle passing phase. Nodes remain in this state until a timer expires that means that the Information Exchange Phase should be re-initiated. If the node is notified that the neighbor is no longer in range before the timer has expired, it returns to the WAIT_NB state. State: WAIT_NB +==================================================================+ | Condition | Action | New State | +==================+===================================+===========+ | New Neighbor | Start Hello procedure for neighbor| HELLO | | | Keep waiting for more neighbors | WAIT_NB | +==================================================================+ State: HELLO +==================================================================+ | Condition | Action | New State | +==================+===================================+===========+ | Hello TLV rcvd | | HELLO | +------------------+-----------------------------------+-----------+ | Enter ESTAB state| Start Information Exchange Phase | INFO_EXCH | +------------------+-----------------------------------+-----------+ | Neighbor Gone | | WAIT_NB | +==================================================================+ State: INFO_EXCH +==================================================================+ | Condition | Action | New State | +==================+===================================+===========+ |Info Exch TLV rcvd| | INFO_EXCH | +------------------+-----------------------------------+-----------+ | No more bundles | Start WAIT_INFO timer | WAIT_INFO | +------------------+-----------------------------------+-----------+ Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 43] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 | Neighbor Gone | | WAIT_NB | +==================================================================+ State: WAIT_INFO +==================================================================+ | Condition | Action | New State | +==================+===================================+===========+ | Timer expires | Restart Information Exchange Phase| INFO_EXCH | +------------------+-----------------------------------+-----------+ | Neighbor Gone | | WAIT_NB | +==================================================================+ 5.2. Hello Procedure The Hello TLV procedure is described by the following rules and state tables. The rules and state tables use the following operations: o The "Update Peer Verifier" operation is defined as storing the values of the Sender Instance and Sender Local Address fields from a Hello SYN or Hello SYNACK function received from the entity at the far end of the link. o The procedure "Reset the link" is defined as: 1. Generate a new instance number for the link. 2. Delete the peer verifier (set to zero the values of Sender Instance and Sender Local Address previously stored by the Update Peer Verifier operation). 3. Send a SYN message. 4. Enter the SYNSENT state. o The state tables use the following Boolean terms and operators: A The Sender Instance in the incoming message matches the value stored from a previous message by the "Update Peer Verifier" operation. Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 44] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 B The Sender Instance and Sender Local Address fields in the incoming message match the values stored from a previous message by the "Update Peer Verifier" operation. C The Receiver Instance and Receiver Local Address fields in the incoming message match the values of the Sender Instance and Sender Local Address used in outgoing Hello SYN, Hello SYNACK, and Hello ACK messages. SYN A Hello SYN TLV has been received. SYNACK A Hello SYNACK TLV has been received. ACK A Hello ACK TLV has been received. "&&" Represents the logical AND operation "||" Represents the logical OR operation "!" Represents the logical negation (NOT) operation. o A timer is required for the periodic generation of Hello SYN, Hello SYNACK, and Hello ACK messages. The value of the timer is announced in the Timer field. To avoid synchronization effects, uniformly distributed random jitter of +/-5% of the Timer field SHOULD be added to the actual interval used for the timer. There are two independent events: the timer expires, and a packet arrives. The processing rules for these events are: Timer Expires: Reset Timer If state = SYNSENT Send SYN If state = SYNRCVD Send SYNACK If state = ESTAB Send ACK Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 45] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 Packet Arrives: If incoming message is an RSTACK: If (A && C && !SYNSENT) Reset the link Else discard the message. If incoming message is a SYN, SYNACK, or ACK: Response defined by the following State Tables. If incoming message is any other PRoPHET TLV and state != ESTAB: Discard incoming message. If state = SYNSENT Send SYN (Note 1) If state = SYNRCVD Send SYNACK (Note 1) Note 1: No more than two SYN or SYNACK messages should be sent within any time period of length defined by the timer. o A connection across a link is considered to be achieved when the protocol reaches the ESTAB state. All TLVs, other than Hello TLVs, that are received before synchronisation is achieved, will be discarded. 5.2.1. State Tables State: SYNSENT +==================================================================+ | Condition | Action | New State | +==================+===================================+===========+ | SYNACK && C | Update Peer Verifier; Send ACK | ESTAB | +------------------+-----------------------------------+-----------+ | SYNACK && !C | Send RSTACK | SYNSENT | +------------------+-----------------------------------+-----------+ | SYN | Update Peer Verifier; Send SYNACK | SYNRCVD | +------------------+-----------------------------------+-----------+ | ACK | Send RSTACK | SYNSENT | +==================================================================+ Note: When sending SYNACK determine if recalculation of predictabilities should be executed or suppressed and send appropriate flag accompanying SYNACK. See Figure 6. Note: When sending ACK, if received SYNACK requested suppression of predictability recalculation, determine if recalculation of predictabilities should be executed or suppressed and send appropriate flag accompanying ACK; otherwise send ACK indicating Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 46] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 recalculation should be executed. State: SYNRCVD +==================================================================+ | Condition | Action | New State | +==================+===================================+===========+ | SYNACK && C | Update Peer Verifier; Send ACK | ESTAB | +------------------+-----------------------------------+-----------+ | SYNACK && !C | Send RSTACK | SYNRCVD | +------------------+-----------------------------------+-----------+ | SYN | Update Peer Verifier; Send SYNACK | SYNRCVD | +------------------+-----------------------------------+-----------+ | ACK && B && C | Send ACK | ESTAB | +------------------+-----------------------------------+-----------+ | ACK && !(B && C) | Send RSTACK | SYNRCVD | +==================================================================+ Note: When sending SYNACK determine if recalculation of predictabilities should be executed or suppressed and send appropriate flag accompanying SYNACK. See Figure 6. Note: When sending ACK, if received SYNACK requested suppression of predictability recalculation, determine if recalculation of predictabilities should be executed or be suppressed and send appropriate flag accompanying ACK; otherwise send ACK indicating recalculation should be executed. State: ESTAB +==================================================================+ | Condition | Action | New State | +==================+===================================+===========+ | SYN || SYNACK | Send ACK (notes 2, 4, and 5) | ESTAB | +------------------+-----------------------------------+-----------+ | ACK && B && C | Send ACK (notes 3, 4, and 5) | ESTAB | +------------------+-----------------------------------+-----------+ | ACK && !(B && C) | Send RSTACK | ESTAB | +==================================================================+ Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 47] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 Note 2: No more than two ACKs should be sent within any time period of length defined by the timer. Thus, one ACK MUST be sent every time the timer expires. In addition, one further ACK may be sent between timer expirations if the incoming message is a SYN or SYNACK. This additional ACK allows the Hello functions to reach synchronisation more quickly. Note 3: No more than one ACK should be sent within any time period of length defined by the timer. Note 4: No more than one ACK should be sent within any time period of length defined by the timer. Note 5: When sending ACK, if received SYNACK requested suppression of predictability recalculation, determine if recalculation of predictabilities should be executed or be suppressed and send appropriate flag accompanying ACK; otherwise send ACK indicating recalculation should be executed. 5.2.2. Interaction with Nodes Using Version 1 of PRoPHET There are existing implementations of PRoPHET based on drafts of this specification prior to version 06 that use version 1 of the protocol. There are two significant areas of difference between version 1 and version 2 as described in this document: o the delivery predictability update equations were significantly different, and in the case of the transitivity equation (Equation 3) could lead to incorrect behavior in some circumstances in version 1, and o the versions of the SYNACK and ACK messages requesting suppression of the recalculation phase were not present in version 1. A node implementing version 2 of the PRoPHET protocol as defined in this document MAY choose either to ignore a communication opportunity with a node that sends a HELLO message indicating that it uses version 1 or it may partially downgrade and respond to messages as if it were a version 1 node. This means that the version field in all message headers MUST contain 1, and the SYNACK and ACK messages indicating use of recalculation phase suppression MUST not be used (i.e., recalculation will always be done). It is RECOMMENDED that the version 2 node use the metric update equations defined in this document even when communicating with a version 1 node as this will Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 48] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 partially inhibit the problems with the transitivity equation in version 1, and that the version 2 node should modify any received metrics that are greater than (1 - delta) to be (1 - delta) to avoid becoming a 'sink' for bundles that are not destined for this node. Generally, nodes using version 1 should be upgraded if at all possible because of problems that have been identified. 5.3. Information Exchange and Bundle Passing Phase After the Hello messages have been exchanged, and the nodes are in the ESTAB state, the information exchange and bundle passing phase is initiated. This section describes the procedure and shows the state transitions necessary in this phase, and the following sections describe the various TLVs passed in this phase in detail. 5.3.1. State Tables This section shows the state transitions that nodes goes through during the information exchange and bundle passing phase. State tables are given for a "Listener" and for a "Initiator". Both nodes should assume both roles during this phase, and this can be done either concurrently or sequentially, depending on the implementation. Listener: --------- State: WAIT_DICT +==================================================================+ | Condition | Action | New State | +==================+===================================+===========+ | Dictionary rcvd | Update local dictionary (note 1) | WAIT_RIB | +------------------+-----------------------------------+-----------+ | ACK received | | WAIT_DICT | +------------------+-----------------------------------+-----------+ | Timeout(peer) | Send ACK (note 2) | WAIT_DICT | +==================================================================+ Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 49] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 State: WAIT_RIB +==================================================================+ | Condition | Action | New State | +==================+===================================+===========+ | RIB TLV received | Save RIB information. | WAIT_RIB | | More RIB TLVs=1 | Wait for more RIB TLVs. | | +------------------+-----------------------------------+-----------+ | RIB TLV received | Update P ; Send offer (note 3) | OFFER | | More RIB TLVs=0 | | | +------------------+-----------------------------------+-----------+ | ACK received | | WAIT_DICT | +------------------+-----------------------------------+-----------+ | Dictionary rcvd | Update local dictionary | WAIT_RIB | +------------------+-----------------------------------+-----------+ | Bundle req rcd | Send ACK | WAIT_DICT | +------------------+-----------------------------------+-----------+ | Timeout(peer) | Send ACK | WAIT_DICT | +==================================================================+ State: OFFER +==================================================================+ | Condition | Action | New State | +==================+===================================+===========+ | Bundle req rcvd | Send requested bundle(s) | OFFER | | #req bundles!=0 | | | +------------------+-----------------------------------+-----------+ | Bundle req rcvd | (note 4) | WAIT_DICT | | #req bundles==0 | | | +------------------+-----------------------------------+-----------+ | ACK received | | WAIT_DICT | +------------------+-----------------------------------+-----------+ | Timeout(info) | Resend bundle offer (note 5) | OFFER | +------------------+-----------------------------------+-----------+ | Dictionary or ACK| Resend bundle offer | OFFER | | received | | | +==================================================================+ Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 50] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 Note 1: Both the dictionary and the RIB TLVs may come in the same PRoPHET message. In that case, the state will change to WAIT_RIB and the RIB will then immediately be processed. Note 2: Send an ACK if the timer for the peering node expires. Either the link has been broken, and then the link setup will restart, or it will trigger the information exchange phase to restart. Note 3: When the RIB is received it is possible for the PRoPHET agent to update its delivery predictabilities according to Section 2.1.1. If the SYNACK message requests suppression of recalculation (function 130) and the ACK message requests suppression of recalculation (function 131) then recalculation MUST be suppressed. In all other cases recalculation must be done. The delivery predictabilities and the RIB is then used together with the forwarding strategy in use to create a bundle offer TLV. This is sent to the peering node. Note 4: No more bundles are requested by the other node, transfer is complete. Note 5: No response to the bundle offer has been received before the timer expired, so we resend the bundle offer. Initiator: ---------- State: CREATE_DR +==================================================================+ | Condition | Action | New State | +==================+===================================+===========+ | Always | Create & send dict & RIB (note 1) | SEND_DR | +==================================================================+ Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 51] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 State: SEND_DR +==================================================================+ | Condition | Action | New State | +==================+===================================+===========+ | Timeout(info) | Resend dictionary & RIB (note 2) | SEND_DR | +------------------+-----------------------------------+-----------+ | Bundle offer rcvd| Send bundle request | REQUEST | +==================================================================+ State: REQUEST +==================================================================+ | Condition | Action | New State | +==================+===================================+===========+ | Timeout(info) | Send bundle request for | REQUEST | | | missing bundles (note 3) | | +------------------+-----------------------------------+-----------+ | Bundle rcvd && | Wait for more bundles | REQUEST | | REQ not fulfilled| (note 4) | | +------------------+-----------------------------------+-----------+ | Bundle rcvd && | Send empty bundle request | REQUEST | | REQ fulfilled | (note 4) | | +------------------+-----------------------------------+-----------+ | ACK received | | CREATE_DR | +==================================================================+ Note 1: The Initiator always starts by creating dictionary and RIB TLVs, and send them to its peering node. Note 2: No response to the RIB has been received before the timer expired, so we resend the dictionary and RIB TLVs. Note 3: If the timer expires, and not all requested bundles have been received, send a new bundle request for the missing bundles. Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 52] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 Note 4: While bundles are received, but there still are requested bundles that have not been received, continue waiting for more bundles. If all desired bundles have been received, send an empty bundles request message to the peering node to signal that no more bundles should be passed. Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 53] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 6. Security Considerations Currently, PRoPHET does not specify any special security measures. As a routing protocol for intermittently connected networks, PRoPHET is a target for various attacks. The various known possible vulnerabilities are discussed in this section. The attacks described here are not problematic if all nodes in the network can be trusted and are working towards a common goal. If there exist such a set of nodes, but there also exist malicious nodes, these security problems can be solved by introducing an authentication mechanism when two nodes meet, for example using a public key system. Thus, only nodes that are known to be members of the trusted group of nodes are allowed to participate in the routing. This of course introduces the additional problem of key distribution, but that is not addressed here. Where suitable, the mechanisms (such as key management and bundle authentication or integrity checks) and terminology specified by the Bundle Security Protocol[symington_09] is to be used. 6.1. Attacks on the Operation of the Protocol There are a number of kinds of attacks on the operation of the protocol that it would be possible to stage on a PRoPHET network. The attacks and possible remedies are listed here. 6.1.1. Black Hole Attack A malicious node sets its delivery predictabilities for all destinations to a value close to or exactly equal to 1 and/or requests all bundles from nodes it meets, and does not forward any bundles. This has two effects, both causing messages to be drawn towards the black hole, instead of to its correct destination. 1. A node encountering a malicious node will try to forward all its bundles to the malicious node, creating the belief that the bundle has been very favorably forwarded. Depending on the forwarding strategy and queueing policy in use, this might hamper future forwarding of the bundle and/or lead to premature dropping of the bundle. 2. Due to the transitivity, the delivery predictabilities reported by the malicious node will affect the delivery predictabilities of other nodes. This will create a gradient for all destinations with the black hole as the "center of gravity" towards which all bundles traverse. This should be particularly severe in connected parts of the network. Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 54] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 6.1.1.1. Attack detection A node receiving a set of delivery predictabilities that are all at or close to 1 should be suspicious. Similarly, a node which accepts all bundles and offers none might be considered suspicious. However these conditions are not impossible in normal operation. 6.1.1.2. Attack prevention/solution To prevent this attack, authentication between nodes that meet needs to be present. Nodes can also inspect the received metrics and bundle acceptances/offers for suspicious patterns and terminate communications with nodes that appear suspicious. The natural evolution of delivery predictabilities should mean that a genuine node would not be permanently ostracised even if the values lead to termination of a communication opportunity on one occasion. The epidemic nature of PRoPHET would mean that such a termination would not generally lead to non-delivery of bundles. 6.1.2. Limited Black Hole Attack/Identity Spoofing A malicious node misrepresents itself by claiming to be someone else. The effects of this attack are: 1. The effects of the black hole attack listed above hold for this attack as well, with the exception that only the delivery predictabilities and bundles for one particular destination are affected. This could be used to "steal" the data that should be going to a particular node. 2. In addition to the above problems, PRoPHET ACKs will be issued for the bundles that are delivered to the malicious node. This will cause these bundles to be removed from the network, reducing the chance that they will reach their real destination. 6.1.2.1. Attack Detection It is possible for the destination to detect that this kind of attack has occurred (but it will not be able to prevent it) if it receives a PRoPHET ACK for a bundle destined to itself but for which it did not receive the corresponding bundle. 6.1.2.2. Attack Prevention/Solution To prevent this attack, authentication between nodes that meet needs to be present. Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 55] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 6.1.3. Fake PRoPHET ACKs A malicious node may issue fake PRoPHET ACKs for all bundles (or only bundles for a certain destination if the attack is targeted at a single node) carried by nodes it meet. The affected bundles will be deleted from the network, greatly reducing their probability of being delivered to the destination. 6.1.3.1. Attack Prevention/Solution If a public key cryptography system is in place, this attack can be prevented by mandating that all PRoPHET ACKs be signed by the destination. Similarly to other solutions using public key cryptography, this introduces the problem of key distribution. 6.1.4. Bundle Store Overflow After encountering and receiving the delivery predictability information from the victim, a malicious node may generate a large number of fake bundles for the destination for which the victim has the highest delivery predictability. This will cause the victim to most likely accept these bundles, filling up its bundle storage, possibly at the expense of other, legitimate, bundles. This problem is transient as the messages will be removed when the victim meets the destination and delivers the messages. 6.1.4.1. Attack Detection If it is possible for the destination to figure out that the bundles it is receiving are fake, it could report that malicious actions are underway. 6.1.4.2. Attack Prevention/Solution This attack could be prevented by requiring sending nodes to sign all bundles they send. By doing this, intermediate nodes could verify the integrity of the messages before accepting them for forwarding. 6.1.5. Bundle Store Overflow with Delivery Predictability Manipulation A more sophisticated version of the attack in the previous section can be attempted. The effect of the previous attack was lessened since the destination node of the fake bundles existed. This caused fake bundles to be purged from the network when the destination was encountered. The malicious node may now use the transitive property of the protocol to boost the victim's delivery predictabilities for a non-existent destination. After this, it creates a large number of fake bundles for this non-existent destination and offers them to the Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 56] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 victim. As before, these bundles will fill up the bundle storage of the victim. The impact of this attack will be greater as there is no probability of the destination being encountered and the bundles being acknowledged. Thus, they will remain in the bundle storage until they time out (the malicious node may set the timeout to a large value) or until they are evicted by the queueing policy. The delivery predictability for the fake destination may spread in the network due to the transitivity, but this is not a problem, as it will eventually age and fade away. The impact of this attack could be increased if multiple malicious nodes collude, as network resources can be consumed at a greater speed and at many different places in the network simultaneously. 6.2. Interactions with External Routing Domains Users may opt to connect two regions of sparsely connected nodes through a connected network such as the Internet where another routing protocol is running. To this network, PRoPHET traffic would look like any other application layer data. Extra care must be taken in setting up these gateway nodes and their interconnections to make sure that malicious nodes cannot use them to launch attacks on the infrastructure of the connected network. In particular, the traffic generated should not be significantly more than what a single regular user end host could create on the network. Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 57] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 7. IANA Considerations Following the policies outlined in "Guidelines for Writing an IANA Considerations Section in RFCs" (RFC 5226 [RFC5226]), the following name spaces are defined in PRoPHET: o DTN Routing Protocol Number Section 4.1 o PRoPHET Version Section 4.1 o Header FlagsSection 4.1 o Result Section 4.1 o Code Section 4.1 o Error and Log Messages o TLV Type Section 4.2 o Hello TLV Flags o Error TLV Flags o Routing Information Base Dictionary TLV Flags Section 4.3.3 o Routing Information Base TLV Flags Section 4.3.3 o RIB entry Flag Section 4.3.4 o Bundle Offer/Response TLV FlagsSection 4.3.5 The following subsections lists the registries that are requested to be created. Initial values for the registries are given below; future assignments are to be made through the Specification Required policy. Where specific values are defined in the IANA registries to be setup according to the specifications in the sub-sections below, the registry should refer to this document as defining the allocation. Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 58] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 7.1. DTN Routing Protocol Number The encoding of the Protocol Number field is: +------------------+-----------+------------------------+ | Protocol | Value | Allocation Control | +------------------+-----------+------------------------+ | PRoPHET Protocol | 0x00 | | | | | | | Reserved | 0x01-0xEF | Specification required | | | | | | Private | 0xF0-0xFE | Experimental | +------------------+-----------+------------------------+ 7.2. PRoPHET Version The encoding of the PRoPHET Version field is: +------------------------------+-----------+------------------------+ | Version | Value | Allocation Control | +------------------------------+-----------+------------------------+ | Reserved | 0x00 | | | | | | | Earlier Drafts | 0x01 | | | | | | | This protocol | 0x02 | | | | | | | Reserved | 0x03-0xEF | Specification required | | | | | | Private | 0xF0-0xFE | Experimental | | | | | | Reserved for future | 0xFF | Specification required | | expansion | | | +------------------------------+-----------+------------------------+ Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 59] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 7.3. Header Flags The flags for the Header are: +--------------+----------+------------------------+ | Bit Position | Meaning | Explanation | +--------------+----------+------------------------+ | Bit 0 | Reserved | Specification required | | | | | | Bit 1 | Reserved | Specification required | | | | | | Bit 2 | Reserved | Specification required | | | | | | Bit 3 | Reserved | Specification required | +--------------+----------+------------------------+ 7.4. Result The encoding of the result field is: +---------------+-------------+------------------------+ | Result Value | Value | Allocation Control | +---------------+-------------+------------------------+ | NoSuccessAck | 0x01 | | | | | | | AckAll | 0x02 | | | | | | | Success | 0x03 | | | | | | | Failure | 0x04 | | | | | | | ReturnReceipt | 0x05 | | | | | | | Reserved | 0x06 - 0x7F | Specification required | | | | | | Private | 0x80 - 0xFF | Experimental | +---------------+-------------+------------------------+ Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 60] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 7.5. Code The encoding for Code is: +----------------------+-------------+------------------------+ | Message Type | Range | Allocation Control | +----------------------+-------------+------------------------+ | Error Responses | 0x00 - 0x33 | Specification required | | | | | | Success Responses | 0x34 - 0x66 | Specification required | | | | | | Event Codes | 0x67 - 0x99 | Specification required | | | | | | Private | 0xA0 - 0xFE | Experimental | | | | | | Error TLV in message | 0xFF | | +----------------------+-------------+------------------------+ 7.6. Error and Log Messages Messages defined in range 0x00 - 0x33 of Code defined in Section 7.5 +-----------------+-------+--------------------+ | Error Message | Value | Allocation Control | +-----------------+-------+--------------------+ | Undefined Error | 1 | | +-----------------+-------+--------------------+ Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 61] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 7.7. TLV Type The list of TLVs Defined for PRoPHET are: +--------------------+-------------+------------------------+ | Type | Value | Allocation Control | +--------------------+-------------+------------------------+ | Hello TLV | 0x01 | | | | | | | Error TLV | 0x02 | | | | | | | Reserved | 0x03 - 0x9F | Specification required | | | | | | RIB dictionary TLV | 0xA0 | | | | | | | RIB TLV | 0xA1 | | | | | | | Bundle Offer | 0xA2 | | | | | | | Bundle Response | 0xA3 | | | | | | | Reserved | 0xA4 - 0xCF | Specification required | | | | | | Private | 0xD0 - 0xFF | Experimental | +--------------------+-------------+------------------------+ 7.8. Hello TLV Flags The following flags are defined for the Hello TLV: +----------+-------------+------------------------+ | Type | Value | Allocation Control | +----------+-------------+------------------------+ | SYN | 0x01 | | | | | | | SYNACK | 0x02 | | | | | | | ACK | 0x03 | | | | | | | RSTACK | 0x04 | | | | | | | Reserved | 0x05 - 0x0F | Specification required | | | | | | Private | 0x10 - 0xFF | Experimental | +----------+-------------+------------------------+ Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 62] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 7.9. Error TLV Flags The following flags are defined for the Error TLV: +----------+-------------+------------------------+ | Type | Value | Allocation Control | +----------+-------------+------------------------+ | Reserved | 0x00 - 0x7F | Specification required | | | | | | Private | 0x80 - 0xFF | Experimental | +----------+-------------+------------------------+ 7.10. RIB Base Dictionary TLV Flags The following flags are defined for the RIB Base Dictionary TLV: +----------+-------------+------------------------+ | Type | Value | Allocation Control | +----------+-------------+------------------------+ | Reserved | 0x00 - 0x7F | Specification required | | | | | | Private | 0x80 - 0xFF | Experimental | +----------+-------------+------------------------+ 7.11. RIB TLV Flags The following flags are defined for the Error TLV: +----------+-------------+------------------------+ | Type | Value | Allocation Control | +----------+-------------+------------------------+ | Reserved | 0x00 - 0x7F | Specification required | | | | | | Private | 0x80 - 0xFF | Experimental | +----------+-------------+------------------------+ Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 63] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 7.12. RIB Flags The following flags are defined for the Error TLV: +----------+-------------+------------------------+ | Type | Value | Allocation Control | +----------+-------------+------------------------+ | Reserved | 0x00 - 0x7F | Specification required | | | | | | Private | 0x80 - 0xFF | Experimental | +----------+-------------+------------------------+ 7.13. Bundle Flags The flags for the Bundle Offer and Response TLV are: +--------------+-----------------+------------------------+ | Bit Position | Meaning | Allocation Control | +--------------+-----------------+------------------------+ | Bit 0 | Bundle Accepted | | | | | | | Bit 1 | Reserved | Specification required | | | | | | Bit 2 | Reserved | Specification required | | | | | | Bit 3 | Reserved | Specification required | | | | | | Bit 4 | Reserved | Specification required | | | | | | Bit 5 | Reserved | Specification required | | | | | | Bit 6 | Reserved | Specification required | | | | | | Bit 7 | PRoPHET ACK | | +--------------+-----------------+------------------------+ Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 64] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 8. Implementation Experience Multiple independent implementations of the PRoPHET protocol exist. The first implementation is written in Java, and has been optimized to run on the Lego MindStorms platform that has very limited resources. Due to the resource constraints, some parts of the protocol have been simplified or omitted, but the implementation contains all the important mechanisms to ensure proper protocol operation. The implementation is also highly modular and can be run on another system with only minor modifications (it has currently been shown to run on the Lego MindStorms platform and on regular laptops). Another implementation is written in C++ and runs in the OmNet++ simulator to enable testing and evaluation of the protocol and new features. Experience and feedback from the implementors on early versions of the protocol have been incorporated into the current version. An implementation compliant to version 2 of the predecessor draft (draft-lindgren-prophet-02.txt) has been written at Baylor University. This implementation has been integrated into the DTN2 reference implementation. An implementation of the protocol in C++ was developed by one of the authors (Samo Grasic) at Lulea University of Technology (LTU) as part of the Saami Networking Connectivity project (see Section 9) and continues to track the development of the protocol. This work is now part of the Networking for Communications Challenged Communities (N4C) project and is used in N4C testbeds. Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 65] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 9. Deployment Experience During a week in August 2006, a proof-of-concept deployment of a DTN system, using the LTU PRoPHET implementation for routing was made in the Swedish mountains - the target area for the Saami Network Connectivity project [ccnc07][doria_02]. Four fixed camps with application gateways, one Internet gateway, and seven mobile relays were deployed. The deployment showed PRoPHET to be able to route bundles generated by different applications such as e-mail and web caching. Within the realms of the SNC and N4C projects, multiple other deployments, both during summer and winter conditions have been done in various scale during 2007-2009. [winsdr08] Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 66] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 10. Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank Olov Schelen and Kaustubh S. Phanse for contributing with valuable feedback regarding various aspects of the protocol. We would also like to thank all other reviewers and the DTNRG chairs for the feedback in the process of developing the protocol. The Hello TLV mechanism is loosely based on Adjacency message developed for RFC3292. Luka Birsa and Jeff Wilson have provided us with feedback from doing implementations of the protocol based on various preliminary versions of the draft. Their feedback has helped us make the draft easier to read for an implementor and has improved the protocol. Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 67] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 11. References 11.1. Normative References [RFC5050] Scott, K. and S. Burleigh, "Bundle Protocol Specification", RFC 5050, November 2007. 11.2. Informative References [RFC4838] Cerf, V., Burleigh, S., Hooke, A., Torgerson, L., Durst, R., Scott, K., Fall, K., and H. Weiss, "Delay-Tolerant Network Architecture", RFC 4838, April 2007. [RFC5226] Narten, T. and H. Tveit Alvestrand, "Guidelines for Writing an IANA Considerations Section in RFCs", RFC 5226, May 2008. [ccnc07] Lindgren, A. and A. Doria, "Experiences from Deploying a Real-life DTN System", Proceedings of the 4th Annual IEEE CONSUMER COMMUNICATIONS and NETWORKING CONFERENCE (CCNC 2007), Las Vegas, Nevada, USA , January 2007. [doria_02] Doria, A., Uden, M., and D. Pandey, "Providing connectivity to the Saami nomadic community", Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Open Collaborative Design for Sustainable Innovation (dyd 02), Bangalore, India , December 2002. [lindgren_06] Lindgren, A. and K. Phanse, "Evaluation of Queueing Policies and Forwarding Strategies for Routing in Intermittently Connected Networks", Proceedings of COMSWARE 2006 , January 2006. [symington_09] Symington, S., Farrell, S., Weiss, H., and P. Lovell, "Bundle Security Protocol Specification", Internet Draft draft-irtf-dtnrg-bundle-security-11.txt , November 2009. [vahdat_00] Vahdat, A. and D. Becker, "Epidemic Routing for Partially Connected Ad Hoc Networks", Duke University Technical Report CS-200006, April 2000. [winsdr08] Lindgren, A., Doria, A., Lindblom, J., and M. Ek, "Networking in the Land of Northern Lights - Two Years of Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 68] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 Experiences from DTN System Deployments", Proceedings of the ACM Wireless Networks and Systems for Developing Regions Workshop(WiNS-DR), San Francisco, California, USA , September 2008. Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 69] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 Appendix A. PRoPHET Example To help grasp the concepts of PRoPHET, an example is provided to give a understanding of the transitive property of the delivery predictability, and the basic operation of PRoPHET. In Figure 11, we revisit the scenario where node A has a message it wants to send to node D. In the bottom right corner of subfigures a)-c), the delivery predictability tables for the nodes are shown. Assume that nodes C and D encounter each other frequently (Figure 11a) ), making the delivery predictability values they have for each other high. Now assume that node C also frequently encounters node B (Figure 11b) ). B and C will get high delivery predictability values for each other, and the transitive property will also increase the value B has for D to a medium level. Finally, node B meets node A (Figure 11c) ) that has a message for node D. Figure 11d) shows the message exchange between node A and node B. Summary vectors and delivery predictability information is exchanged, delivery predictabilities are updated, and node A then realized that P_(b,d) > P_(a,d), and thus forwards the message for D to node B. Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 70] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 +----------------------------+ +----------------------------+ | | | | | C | | D | | D | | | | B | | B C | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | A* | | A* | +-------------+--------------+ +-------------+--------------+ | A | B | C | D | | A | B | C | D | |B:low |A:low |A:low |A:low | |B:low |A:low |A:low |A:low | |C:low |C:low |B:low |B:low | |C:low |C:high|B:high |B:low | |D:low |D:low |D:high |C:high| |D:low |D:med |D:high |C:high| +-------------+--------------+ +-------------+--------------+ a) b) +----------------------------+ A B | | | | | D | |Summary vector&delivery pred| | | |--------------------------->| | C | |Summary vector&delivery pred| | | |<---------------------------| | | | | | B* | Update delivery predictabilities | A | | | | | Packet for D not in SV | +-------------+--------------+ P(b,d)>P(a,d) | | A | B | C | D | Thus, send | |B:low |A:low |A:low |A:low | | | |C:med |C:high|B:high |B:low | | Packet for D | |D:low+|D:med |D:high |C:high| |--------------------------->| +-------------+--------------+ | | c) d) Figure 11: PRoPHET example Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 71] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 Appendix B. Neighbor Discovery Example This section outlines an example of a simple neighbor discovery protocol that can be run in-between PRoPHET and underlying layer in case lower layers do not provide methods for neighbor discovery. It assumes that the underlying layer supports broadcast messages as would be the case if a wireless infrastructure was involved. Each node needs to maintain a list of its active neighbors. The operation of the protocol is as follows: 1. Every BEACON_INTERVAL milliseconds, the node does a local broadcast of a beacon that contains its identity and address, as well as the BEACON_INTERVAL value used by the node. 2. Upon reception of a beacon, the following can happen: 1. The sending node is already in the list of active neighbors. Update its entry in the list with the current time, and the node's BEACON_INTERVAL if it has changed. 2. The sending node is not in the list of active neighbors. Add the node to the list of active neighbors and record the current time and the node's BEACON_INTERVAL. Notify the PRoPHET agent that a new neighbor is available ("New Neighbor", as described in Section 2.4). 3. If a beacon has not been received from a node in the list of active neighbors within a time period of NUM_ACCEPTED_LOSSES * BEACON_INTERVAL (for the BEACON_INTERVAL used by that node), it should be assumed that this node is no longer a neighbor. The entry for this node should be removed from the list of active neighbors, and the PRoPHET agent should be notified that a neighbor has left ("Neighbor Gone", as described in Section 2.4). Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 72] Internet-Draft PRoPHET October 2010 Authors' Addresses Anders F. Lindgren Swedish Institute of Computer Science Box 1263 Kista SE-164 29 SE Phone: +46707177269 Email: andersl@sics.se URI: http://www.sics.se/~andersl Avri Doria Lulea University of Technology Lulea SE-971 87 SE Phone: Email: avri@acm.org URI: http://psg.com/~avri Elwyn Davies Folly Consulting Soham UK Phone: Email: elwynd@folly.org.uk URI: Samo Grasic Lulea University of Technology Lulea SE-971 87 SE Phone: Email: samo.grasic@ltu.se URI: Lindgren, et al. Expires April 26, 2011 [Page 73]