Subject: Protocol Action: 'Bundle Protocol Version 7' to Proposed Standard (draft-ietf-dtn-bpbis-31.txt)

From: The IESG <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Feb 2021 05:59:26 -0800

The IESG has approved the following document:
- 'Bundle Protocol Version 7'
  (draft-ietf-dtn-bpbis-31.txt) as Proposed Standard

This document is the product of the Delay/Disruption Tolerant Networking
Working Group.

The IESG contact persons are Martin Duke and Magnus Westerlund.

A URL of this Internet Draft is:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-dtn-bpbis/

Technical Summary

  Since the publication of the Bundle Protocol Specification
  (Experimental RFC 5050) in 2007, the Delay-Tolerant Networking
  Bundle Protocol has been implemented in multiple programming
  languages and deployed to a wide variety of computing platforms.
  This implementation and deployment experience has identified
  opportunities for making the protocol simpler, more capable,
  and easier to use.  The present document, standardizing the
  Bundle Protocol (BP), is adapted from RFC 5050 in that context.

  This document describes version 7 of BP.

  Delay Tolerant Networking is a network architecture providing
  communications in and/or through highly stressed environments.
  Stressed networking environments include those with intermittent
  connectivity, large and/or variable delays, and high bit error
  rates.  To provide its services, BP may be viewed as sitting at
  the application layer of some number of constituent networks,
  forming a store-carry-forward overlay network. Key capabilities
  of BP include:

    - Ability to use physical mobility for the movement of data
    - Ability to move the responsibility for error control from
      one node to another
    - Ability to cope with intermittent connectivity, including
      cases where the sender and receiver are not concurrently
      present in the network
    - Ability to take advantage of scheduled, predicted, and
      opportunistic connectivity, whether bidirectional or
      unidirectional, in addition to continuous connectivity
    - Late binding of overlay network endpoint identifiers to
      underlying constituent network addresses

Working Group Summary

  The document is the core specification for the WG and have 
  received significant review and feedback from the participants.
  At the end of the process there was quite some discussion around
  this document obsoleting RFC 5050. Which both required new 
  process between IETF and IRTF stream manager as well as being
  decided with a rough consensus. 

Document Quality

  Multiple interoperable implementations of [RFC5050] have been
  deployed in significant ongoing experiments for many years.
  At the time of this writing, the only known implementation of
  the current document is microPCN (https://upcn.eu/).
 
Personnel

  Document Shepherd: Fred L. Templin ([email-masked])
  Responsible Area Director: Magnus Westerlund ([email-masked])