Abstract: Recently, the paradigm of DTN has become popular in literature. In DTNs, the network is never completely connected, but intermittent connections between nodes are opportunistically used to establish end-to-end data transmission paths over time. Intermittent connections are set up when mobile nodes come in wireless range of other mobile or static nodes. In this connection, message ferries are special nodes with pre-determined mobility patterns designed to improve the DTN characteristics. There are many interesting research problems presented in the literature related to message ferries, such as route design, variable speed ferries, multiple ferry system design, node relaying, etc. In this talk, we present this research area in general and some specific research problems in more detail.

Short Bio: Byungsoon Kim received his Bachelor's dgree in 1991 and Master's degree in 1993 from the Computer science dept. of Sogang University, and Ph.D. in 2003 from the Computer engineering dept. of Gyungbook National University in Korea. He worked for Hynix Semiconductor Co. from 1993 to 1996, and as an Assistant professor from 1996 to 2003 in the Computer and Information Science dept. of Daegu Technical College. He is currently employed as faculty at the Andong National Unversity. His research interests extend over various topics in networking and wireless networkinng, including multicast in wired and wireless networks, and design of sensor networks and DTNs.