Re: [dtn-interest] DTN BoF Proposal for IETF90

[William Immerman <[e-mail]>]

Lloyd--

I don't have the basis or history that most on this list do to address the specific technical limitations of BP, so I won't, but I do have some recent first-hand experience trying to get disruption-tolerant networking more attention as a concept/technology with people with repeated operational needs, and I can say that the limited adoption you refer to doesn't seem based on technical flaws in the slightest:

On May 5, 2014, at 3:12 AM, <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> wrote:

> .. I don't see how an RG with failing output and limited adoption
> can be transformed into a WG with successful output and widespread (even
> terrestrial?) adoption, and I have never seen that done.

If  I can distill the problem getting adoption, it would have two main parts:
1) Potential users really don't understand (wide area/inter-) networking. Their questions and comments would apply equally to TCP/IP if it were being presented new to them today.
2) Despite (1), they buy in completely to the value of Internet technology, but they don't understand that there are many cases of practical value where just buying more network bandwidth is not the answer and will never be, and don't get why "disruption-tolerance" is needed

Ironically, for all the contentiousness in this community, it appears to me that these are the two things that are almost universally agreed upon by people with expertise and experience, i.e., the value of true networking and the need to handle disruptions for which IP end-to-end alone is poorly suited.

The first part of your comment, that the output of the RG is diminishing, is certainly not unrelated to the issue of adoption. Independent of what individuals may think is the suitability of prior work, there are limited resources available to anyone for further research (whether to mature existing technologies or to develop alternatives) until there's a demonstrated utility for what's already been done. There's a catch-22 with regard to the potential adopters/funders recognizing the need prior to this demonstration. In the meantime, more and more specific instances are being handled with repeated, not always great, deployment-specific applications, and the time is passing to do something smarter that encompasses a broader range of needs. This may be part of the reason that Stephen is asking for everyone regardless of technical specifics to collaborate.

Bill Immerman