A blind mechanism to improve content distribution in delay/disruption tolerant networks

In Delay/Disruption Tolerant Networks (DTNs), content distribution is performed leveraging on the transient and dynamic contacts between moving users. Such a best effort mechanism is prone to unbounded downloading delays and bad user experience. To cope with these occurrences, this paper introduces a novel mechanism to improve content distribution in DTNs. The proposed mechanism is based on the Delay Tolerant Transport Protocol (DTTP)and aims at controlling the diversity in the coded information transmission without increasing the use of network resources or including any feedback messages. In order to validate the proposed mechanism, different scenarios have been evaluated using known DTNs routing protocols. The results show significant gains achieved in terms of delivery ratio in all evaluated scenarios, confirming the efficiency and effectiveness of our protocol independently of the lower layer protocols in use.