118 (IJCNS) International Journal of Computer and Network Security,

Vol. 2, No. 9, September 2010

Efficient Buffer management Policy DLA for DTN

Routing Protocols under Congestion
Sulma Rashid1, Qaisar Ayub2
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM)
, Faculty of Computer Science & Information System,
Department of Computer System & Communication
Skudai - Johor, 81310, Malaysia
1
sulmaqaiser@gmail.com
2
sheikhqaisar@gmail.com

Abstract: In DTN networks end-to-end path may not be exist
and disconnections may occur frequently due to propagation
delay, node mobility, power outage and operational environment
(deep space underwater). Thus transmission in such
environments follow store-carry-forward strategy in which a
node store the message in buffer, carries it while moving and
transmit when connection becomes available. In addition
multiple copies of message may be forwarded to increase the
delivery probability. In such case the node buffer becomes the
critical recourse and need to be managed effectively to overcome
congestion and message drop ratio. The efficient buffer
management policy deals which message to drop when
congestion arises. In this paper we propose a new buffer
management policy for DTN in which when the node buffer is
congested and it needs to store a new message, the large size
message from the buffer will be dropped. The strategy is called
drop largest (DLA). We prove through the simulation that our
buffer management policy (DLA) outperforms well as compared
to existing Drop Oldest.
Keywords: Delay Tolerance Network DTN, DLA (Drop
largest), DO (Drop oldest), Algorithm
buffer management issues, but an efficient [13] buffer
management scheme is still required to overcome
congestion.
In this work we propose an efficient buffer management
policy (DLA) to improve message delivery, message drop,
overhead ratio and buffer time average under highly
congested network. To evaluate the performance of our
proposed buffer management policy we use ONE simulator
[5]. We have performed the simulations with spray&wait,
direct contact, First contact and Epidemic routing protocols.
The proposed scheme performs well only delivery ratio in
case of epidemic routing is minimized.
The rest of paper is organized follows Section 2 discuss
existing buffer management policies. Section 3 summarizes
performance metrics. Section 4 describes evaluation our
buffer management policy under routing protocols. Section
5 is about proposed algorithm (DLA). Section 6-7 is for
simulation results and conclusion.

1. Introduction 2. Existing buffer management policies

The traditional network (Ad-hoc, TCP/IP) required end-to-
end path and can not be implemented in rebellion wireless
applications e.g. Military networks, vehicle ad hoc network,
wild life tracking sensor networks where the connectivity is
not stable due to node mobility, low power nodes
periodically shutting down. In order to cope with
disconnections researcher have proposed a new protocol
Delay Tolerance Network DTN [1], [2], [7] and [14]. DTN
routing protocols have adopted a “store-carry forward”
paradigm, where each node in the network stores a packet
that has been forwarded to it by other nodes, carries the
packet while it moves around, and forwards or duplicates it
to other nodes (or the destination node) when they come
within transmission range.
Nodes under DTN protocol may not have complete
information about network; therefore message is replicated
to increase the delivery probability like Epidemic [6]. Due to
low data rates and short duration of node encounters
epidemic was modified by spray-and-wait [2-4], K-hop
probabilistic forwarding [12].
It is evicted that storage of message for long time and its
replication [6], [14], [3] make buffer run out of capacity and
effect the performance of router. Some recent work [8]-[11],
[17] and [18] addressed few transmission scheduling and
2.1 Drop Random(DR)
The selection of message to be dropped is random.
2.2 Drop –Least-Recently-Received (DLR)
The message with the long stay time in buffer will be
dropped. The idea is that the packet with in buffer for long
time has less probability to be passed to other nodes.
2.3 Drop-Oldest (DOA)
The message with the shorted remaining life time (TTL) in
network is dropped. The idea of dropping such packet is that
if packet TTL is small, it is in the network for long time and
thus has high probability to be already delivered.
2.4 DL-Drop last(DL)
It drops the newly received message.
2.5 Drop front(DF)
The message that enters first in the queue is dropped first.
2.6 N-Drop
In N-Dropt [17], the message that does N number of
forwarding will be selected to drop.
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Vol. 2, No. 9, September 2010

3. Performance metrics probability of reaching their destination.

3.1 Message delivery

5. Algorithm (DLA)
It is a function of measuring messages that are correctly
received by the final destination within a given time period. In normal scenario there are two possibilities where a
message will be dropped, after expiration of TTL, when
delivered to destination. When node buffer is fully occupied
3.2 Buffer time average and a new message turns up, the problem is which message
The buffer time average is the function of measuring the from buffer will be chosen to drop (Congestion drop).
average time spends by all messages in node buffer. Assume M messages are propagated in the network using
replication. We consider a time instant where NODE-A is
3.3 Message drop
packed full and a new message copy M6 of size 300kb
It is a function to count number of messages dropped during arrives from NODE-B.
transmission.
Node-A Node-B
3.4 Overhead ratio
It is negation of number of message relayed to message
delivered.

4. Routing protocol under evaluation Figure 1. Congested buffer

4.1 Spray&wait (SW) DOA algorithm drop oldest messages from buffer until room
of 300kb becomes available, NODE-A will drop M1, M2,
Spray & wait [3] is a routing protocol that attempts to gain M3, and M4 to free enough space (300kb) for new message.
the delivery ratio benefits of replication-based routing as DOA algorithm drop oldest messages from buffer until room
well as the low resource utilization benefits of forwarding- of 300kb becomes available, NODE-A will drop M1, M2,
based routing like direct transmission. M3, and M4 to free enough space (300kb) for new message.
The Spray and Wait protocol is composed of two phases: DLA policy drop large size message which is M5. Hence the
the spray phase and the wait phase. When a new message is drop and overhead is considerably reduced while message
created in the system, a number L is attached to that (M1, M2, M3, and M4) stay in network which increase the
message indicating the maximum allowable copies of the delivery of messages.
message in the network. During the spray phase, the source
Table 1: Variables
of the message is responsible for "spraying", or delivery, to
Variable Description
one copy to L distinct "relays". When a relay receives the Ni Number of i node i={1,2,3….n}
copy, it enters the wait phase, where the relay simply holds SM Size of message
that particular message until the destination is encountered BN Buffer size at each node
directly. In other words, Spray and Wait could be viewed as BNA Buffer available at each node
a tradeoff between single and multi-copy schemes. Nc Node holding the connection counter
MN New message
4.2 First contact (FC) MR Messages currently help by router
In first contact [15] and [16] routing, the router transmits Bu Buffer in use
the message randomly as other nodes come under its
Check available buffer space
communication range. Under congested networks the for each message in MR
messages can not route. Bu = getsize (MRi) + Bu;
4.3 Direct delivery (DD) end loop;
BNA = BN-Bu
The source node [16] transmits the message to other node if SM (Node or Relay) < BNA THEN
only when other node is its destination. ADD (MRiàBN, MN)
end if;
Direct delivery can be considered a hybrid technique as one if SM(Source or Relay) > BNA THEN
can include it in flooding where Direct Delivery always /* drop some message to make room for new message*/
select the direct path between source and destination. Greatest = 0;
/* Find the message with large size */
while (SM >BNA)
4.4 Epidemic routing For each message M in MR
begin
Epidemic Routing [6] spread application messages to nodes, If Size (MRi ) > Greatest Then
called carriers, within connected areas of ad hoc networks. Greatest= Sizeof (MRi)
end if
In Epidemic Routing when carriers coming into contact end loop; //for loop
with another connected portion of the network through node end loop; //while loop
Remove (MRàBNA, Greatest);
mobility it spread the message to nodes. Through such end;
iterative transmission of data, messages have a high Algorithm DLA
120 (IJCNS) International Journal of Computer and Network Security,
Vol. 2, No. 9, September 2010

space as described in algorithm (section 4). In Epidemic

6. Simulation and results routing the message delivery was affected but message drop
is almost half then then existing DOA, DLA have optimized
In the following section we have examined routing protocols the message drop metric.
(Section 4), with exiting (DOA) and proposed (DLA).
All the experiments were performed using ONE Simulator.
The ONE [5] Simulator is a discrete event simulator written
in Java. The main objective of simulator is to implement
DTN (store-carry-forward) of message for long time, where
the probability of disconnections and failures increased.

Table 2: Simulation setup

Number of Nodes 126
Movement model 1 Shortest path map based movement
Movement model 2 Map rout movement
Number of groups 06
Buffer size 5MB
Transmission range 10M
Transmission speed 250 K
Figure 4. Overhead ratio (DLA, DO)
Message creation interval 24-35 (seconds)
Figure 4 represents the influence of DLA and DOA with
respect to overhead. We can see clearly that overhead ratio
with DLA is decrease in all routers. In DD due to direct
transmission overhead is zero for both algorithms, while
Epidemic overhead is reduced to considerable extent.

Figure 2. Message delivery (DLA, DOA)

First we consider message delivery of routing protocols with
DOA and DLA, which is shown in figure 2. It is easy to see
that different routers have varying impact on message
delivery, but higher delivery in case of spray&wait and
direct delivery router. First contact with DLA lies between
spary&waits and Direct delivery, but gain high message
delivery then DOA. However in all the configuration of
routers, message delivery of DLA is improved then DOA
only effected in Epidemic router but improves other metrics
discussed later and is trade off.
Figure 5. Buffer time average
Fig 5 observes buffer time average with DLA and DOA. It
can be clearly seen that DLA has high value of buffer time
average with all router.
7. Conclusion & future work
In this paper we propose an efficient buffer management
policy DLA which drop large size messages when the node
buffer is congested.
Its also optimize the routers performance metrics like
message delivery , message drop, overhead ratio and buffer
time average compared to DOA. Future work is to
investigate the DLA (Drop Largest) technique with all
existing buffer management policies.

Figure 3. Message dropped (DLA, DOA) References

Figure 3 plot the impact of message drop with DLA and
DOA. In all router configurations DLA reduce the message
drops to a significant quantity. We can observe the strength
of DLA, which drop large size message and free more buffer
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1, Accessed July 2010. degree in 2001 from UAAR Pakistan. She has
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