Efficient content dissemination in heterogeneous networks prone to episodic connectivity

Ubiquity of portable computing devices coupled with wide availability of wireless communication present new impor- tant opportunities for applications involving media-rich content dissemination. However, as access networks become increasingly more heterogeneous, seamless data delivery across internets consisting of a variety of network technology becomes a real challenge. In this demonstration, we showcase a system that enables content dissemination over heterogeneous internets consisting of wired, infrastructure-based and infrastructure-less wireless networks that may be prone to intermittent connectivity. Using an efficient, yet flexible buffer management scheme, we are able to address application-specific performance requirements such as average delay, delivery probability, energy efficiency, etc. Our system uses the Message Delivery in Heterogeneous, Disruption-prone Networks (MeDeHa) [2]) framework to deliver messages across a heterogeneous internet coupled with History-Based Scheduling and Drop (HBSD) buffer management [1] as a way to optimize resources provided by opportunistic networks. MeDeHa, which is described in detail in [2], provides seamless data delivery over interconnecting networks of different types, i.e., infrastructure-based and infrastructure-less networks. MeDeHa's comprehensive approach to bridging infrastructure-based and infrastructureless networks also copes with intermittent connectivity. For this demonstration, we showcase a "complete stack" solution featuring, from to top to bottom, the DTN2 "bundle" layer, HBSD as an "external router" to DTN2, and MeDeHa, which handles message delivery. We have implemented, on a Linux-based testbed, (i) the MeDeHa framework, (ii) the HBSD [3] external router for the DTN2 [4] architecture.