Patent ID: 7835285

Claim:
A method for forming a Quality of Service (QoS) hierarchical, disruption tolerant network, comprising: using a Delay Tolerant Network (DTN) software overlay in communication with a first router operating in a first plane of a network to define hierarchical forwarding behavior for data being generated and transmitted by the first router to a second router, where the second router is operating in a second plane of the network, with the second plane being within a network physical layer of the network; using the second router to perform local buffering and data retransmission in response to at least one intermittent network outage without causing the DTN software overlay to invoke buffering by the first router; and communicating between the first router operating in the first plane and the second router operating in the second plane to manage the transmission of data between said first and second planes as needed in the event of a network outage that is longer in duration than said intermittent outage.