RFC9171 Bundle Protocol: The Station Wagon of Tapes for Space? [pdf]

Delay-Tolerant Networking is a network architecture providing communications in and/or through highly stressed environments. Stressed networking environments include those with intermittent connectivity, large and/or variable delays, and high bit error rates. To provide its services, BP may be viewed as sitting at the application layer of some number of constituent networks, forming a store-carry-forward overlay network. Key capabilities of BP include: • Ability to use physical motility for the movement of data. • Ability to move the responsibility for error control from one node to another. • Ability to cope with intermittent connectivity, including cases where the sender and receiver are not concurrently present in the network. • Ability to take advantage of scheduled, predicted, and opportunistic connectivity, whether bidirectional or unidirectional, in addition to continuous connectivity. • Late binding of overlay-network endpoint identifiers to underlying constituent network addresses