Due to node mobility, the network topology of a mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) usually varies from full connection to intermittent connection, showing a connection diversity. There have been many well-known routing protocols for full connection and intermittent connection situations respectively. However, it is hard to find one-fit-to-all routing protocol suitable in all connection situations. In this paper, we propose a unified transport framework for MANET with connection diversity, named by DTTP (Delay Tolerant Transport Protocol). DTTP provides a scheme to integrate routing protocols in both paradigms. It is only implemented in end nodes (sources and destinations) and the intermediate nodes remain untouched. The decision on which protocol to use for transmitting a given message from source to destination is made on application level and transparent to applications. To this end, DTTP defines an unified API for application development, and designs a heartbeat mechanism to determine the network connection situations. We implement DTTP in our testbed and evaluate its performance. The experiment results verify its fundamental functionalities.
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