A reputation-based approach to tolerate misbehaving carriers in Delay Tolerant Networks

Abstract

Delay Tolerant Network (DTN) is a network paradigm used to deliver messages when network connectivity is not guaranteed. In a DTN, communication is made possible by carriers, mobile nodes that physically carry messages from a network partition to another. Selecting carriers that provide the best delivery probability is a crucial issue. However, if carriers misbehave, the integrity and availability of a DTN is endangered. In this paper we present a decentralised reputation-based system aimed at tolerating misbehaving carriers. A prototype of the system has been integrated into Context Aware Routing (CAR) [1]. Simulations show that the resulting system RCAR provides a greater delivery probability than CAR and Epidemic Routing [2] without increasing the average delivery delay.