Augustin Chaintreau

Pocket switched networks and human mobility in conference environments

Pocket Switched Networks (PSN) make use of both human mobility and local/global connectivity in order to transfer data between mobile users devices. This falls under the Delay Tolerant Networking (DTN) space, focusing on the use of opportunistic networking. One key problem in PSN is in designing forwarding algorithms which cope with human mobility patterns. We present an experiment measuring forty-one humans mobility at the Infocom 2005 conference. The results of this experiment are similar to our previous experiments in corporate and academic working environments, in exhibiting a power-law distrbution for the time between node contacts. We then discuss the implications of these results on the design of forwarding algorithms for PSN.

Pocket switched networking: challenges, feasibility and implementation issues

The Internet is built around the assumption of contemporaneous end-to-end connectivity. This is at odds with what typically happens in mobile networking, where mobile devices move between islands of connectivity, having opportunity to transmit packets through their wireless interface or simply carrying the data toward a connectivity island. We propose Pocket Switched Networking, a communication paradigm which reflects the reality faced by the mobile user. Pocket Networking falls under DTN. We describe the challenges that this approach entails and provide evidence that it is feasible with todays technology.