Delay/Disruption Tolerant Networking-Based Routing for Rural Internet Connectivity (DRINC)

Abstract

Rural networking connectivity is a very dynamic and attractive research field. Nowadays big IT companies and many governments are working to help connect all these rural, disconnected people to Internet. This paper introduces a new routing algorithm that can bring non-real-time Internet connectivity to rural users. This solution is based on previously tested ideas, especially on Delay/Disruption Tolerant Networking technologies, since they can be used to transmit messages to and from difficult to access sites. It introduces the rural connectivity problem and its context. Then, it shows the proposed solution with its mathematical model used to describe the problem, its proposed heuristic, and its results. The advantage of our solution is that it is a low-cost technology that uses locally available infrastructure to reach even the most remote towns. The mathematical model describes the problem of transmitting messages from a rural, usually disconnected user, to an Internet connected node, through a non-reliable network using estimated delivery probabilities varying through time. The forwarding algorithm uses local knowledge gathered from interactions with other nodes, and it learns which nodes are more likely to connect in the future, and which nodes are more likely to deliver the messages to the destination. Our algorithm achieves an equal or better performance in delivery rate and delay than other well-known routing protocols for the rural scenarios tested. This paper adds more simulation results for the proposed rural scenarios, and it also extends the explanation of the mathematical model and the heuristic algorithm from the conference paper "Delay/Disruption Tolerant Networks Based Message Forwarding Algorithm for Rural Internet Connectivity Applications" [1]