FTP@VDTN — A file transfer application for Vehicular Delay-Tolerant Networks

Vehicular Delay-Tolerant Networks (VDTNs) aim to provide non-real time services and applications, such as electronic mail or file transfer, in environments with sparse and intermittent connectivity, variable delays, or where an end-to-end connection may not exist. Gathering contributions from opportunistic and cooperative networks, VDTN tries to generalize the delay-tolerant networks concept and apply it to vehicular networks. In VDTNs, data is carried between network nodes using vehicles that allow network connectivity. This paper presents a file transfer application for VDTNs, called FTP@VDTN, and studies its performance through a laboratory VDTN testbed using two routing mechanisms (Epidemic, and Spray and Wait) combined with different scheduling and dropping policies. It was demonstrated that FTP@VDTN works properly in a VDTN testbed. In terms of performance evaluation of VDTNs using FTP@VDTN, it was shown that remaining lifetime combination of scheduling and dropping policies perform better for both routing schemes.