Special issue of computer communications on delay and disruption tolerant networking

A special issue of Computer Communications on delay and disruption tolerant networking (DTN) is discussed. The first paper in this issue entitled 'DBS-IC: An Adaptive Data Bundling System for Intermittent Connectivity' by Harras and co-workers proposes a proactive approach to dealing with the possibility of frequently-disrupted communication by allowing users to a priori specify data that they will require and optimistically gathering and forwarding that data during periods when connectivity is good. The second paper in the issue entitled 'On the Implications of Routing Metric Staleness in Delay Tolerant Networks' by Wittie and others addresses the crucial issue of routing in DTNs. 'Performance Comparison of Different Multicast Routing Strategies in Disruption Tolerant Networks' by Ye and researchers presents a comparative study of a number of different classes of multicast routing protocol for DTNs including unicast-based, static-tree-based and dynamic-tree based multicast.