Network Modelling Meeting - June 20

[Joseph Peters <peters@cs.sfu.ca>]

NETWORK MODELLING RESEARCH GROUP
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Friday, June 20, 13:30, ASB 9896

Speaker:  Joseph Peters
         School of Computing Science

Title:    Reliable Communication in Unreliable Networks

Juice and cookies will be provided.
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Abstract:

Reliable communication in ad hoc networks is currently an active research
area.  The challenge is to guarantee the delivery of packets in a
environment in which the topology is changing dynamically.  Furthermore,
this should be accomplished without centralized control and it should be
accomplished efficiently.  A number of protocols have been proposed and
some authors even claim to meet the three criteria of reliability,
efficiency, and distributed control, but there is a noticeable lack of
rigour in the research.  In particular, I have not seen any convincing
proofs to back up the claims (although I certainly don't claim to have
read all of the papers in this area).

On the other hand, reliable communication in a fixed network in which
the communication links are unreliable has been studied for more than
25 years and there is a strong foundation of theoretical research with
rigourous proofs underlying this research area.  The challenge is to
guarantee delivery of packets in an environment in which the topology is
unstable and this should be accomplished efficiently without centralized
control.

In this talk, I will survey some of the results concerning communication
in "eventually connected" networks.  These are networks in which there are
paths of functioning links over time between senders and receivers, but at
any given time, the network is not even guaranteed to be connected.  It is
only required that no edge cut (that disconnects the network) persists
forever.