nerd2ninja; ©️📺 on Nostr: Thinking about Delay Tolerant Networking. I'm thinking there should be two types. ...

Thinking about Delay Tolerant Networking.

I'm thinking there should be two types.

Global addresses for long haul routing

"Local" as in region wide addresses.

I'm thinking it may be good to have a onion style packet routing in that a packet addressed to a region address would exist encrypted inside the globally addressed packet.

You could even have a packet encrypted inside of that one which goes to an even smaller region address.

But how would you deconflict global address names between random DTN router operators who might want the same name?

I believe the answer is by social construct. Just agree that all global names must be dtn://hemisphere-timezone/ and reject names that don't fit that scheme. If two nodes want the same name within that area, they can create region addresses for each other within their contact plans. This could mean sharing the same decryption key for that region or it could mean including two different embedded packets depending on which node receives the packet.

A destination node should know their full path to global which makes their full destination DTN address so that this fluidity in addressing isn't problematic. Additionally it stands to reason that if a node moves between regions it will have multiple DTN addresses. Which might mean multiple independent packets being sent to the same intended endpoint. This can be useful for confusing an interceptor from fully understanding where a packet is going without confusing routers.

Oh and if you're thinking "man these sound like some big packets" that's because they can be. Sure a long haul through UHF, Ham radio or any radio band really won't like it very much, but physical delivery methods with SD cards such as post office mail, drone delivery (farry net), pigeon carrier, or any of those other large packet size, but potentially long delivery time methods should be perfectly happy with it.