A wireless network that allows easy connection establishment between mobile wireless client devices in the same physical area without the use of an infrastructure device, such as an access point or a base station.
Due to mobility, a node can sometimes find itself devoid of network neighbours. In this case, the node 1️⃣ stores the messages en route to their destination (which is not the node itself), and 2️⃣ when it finds a route of the destination of the messages, forwards the messages to the next node on the route. This networking paradigm is called store-and-forward.
A delay-tolerant networking (DTN) architecture [CBH+07] is a store-and-forward communications architecture in which source nodes send DTN bundles through a network to destination nodes. In a DTN architecture, nodes use the Bundle Protocol (BP) to deliver data across multiple links to the destination nodes.
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References
[CCS15]
CCSDS, CCSDS Bundle Protocol Specification, Recommended Standard CCSDS 734.2-B-1, The Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems, September 2015.
[CBH+07]
V. Cerf, S. Burleigh, A. Hooke, L. Torgerson, R. Durst, K. Scott, K. Fall, and H. Weiss, Delay-tolerant networking architecture, RFC 4838, April 2007.
J. Padgette, J. Bahr, M. Batra, M. Holtmann, R. Smithbey, L. Chen, and K. Scarfone, Guide to Bluetooth Security, NIST Special Publication 800-121 Revision 2 Update 1, May 2017. https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.SP.800-121r2-upd1.
[SB07]
K. Scott and S. Burleigh, Bundle protocol specification, RFC 5050, November 2007.