acm sigcomm

On numerous occasions, trips to the facilities coincide with an important mobile phone call. Due to the sleek and polished nature of modern phones, attempting to promptly deal with such calls can occasionally lead to the phone sliding through the owner’s hands, surrendering to the force of gravity and flying down the hole. This is a disaster, and often an expensive incident. It can also be a health and safety hazard, with the owner desperately attempting to retrieve their phone and re-using it.

So what is all this DTN research about anyway? Sceptics ask: 'Why are there no DTN applications?', or 'Why is DTN performance so miserable?' This article attempts to address some of these complaints. We present suggestions of expectations for applications, and metrics for performance, which suggest a more tolerant view of research in the area.

The networking research community lacks a tradition of sharing experimental data, or using such data for reproducing results. But are we really that bad? Are we worse than researchers in other fields? And if so, how can we do better?