Authenticated resource management in delay-tolerant networks using proxy signatures

In Delay-Tolerant Networks (DTN), individual nodes with much higher rates of sending new bundles than average can degrade the delivery rate of other nodes substantially. They have a much higher impact on the overall network fairness than in traditional networks because of DTN - specific properties, such as decentralized design and the store-and-forward approach. Authenticated resource management schemes were proposed to guarantee minimum delivery rates in the presence of nodes with high resource utilization as well as in the presence of malicious nodes performing Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks. They partition the buffer adaptively based on the source node identifier of incoming bundles, which is cryptographically authenticated by the network. We extend such approaches by using a cryptographic primitive named proxy signature. Our method allows treating a bundle not only based on its source node. Instead, a combined affiliation of the source node together with the requesting node can be used which allows for better support of important communication patterns such as request-response. Our method can improve the overall fairness and is similar to a reverse charge call in telephone networks, as the requesting node “pays” for the response by allowing it to also use buffer space normally assigned to itself. We evaluate our approach using simulations in different scenarios.