  This article studies disruption tolerant networks (DTNs) where each node
knows the probabilistic distribution of contacts with other nodes. It proposes
a framework that allows one to formalize the behaviour of such a network. It
generalizes extreme cases that have been studied before where (a) either nodes
only know their contact frequency with each other or (b) they have a perfect
knowledge of who meets who and when. This paper then gives an example of how
this framework can be used; it shows how one can find a packet forwarding
algorithm optimized to meet the 'delay/bandwidth consumption' trade-off:
packets are duplicated so as to (statistically) guarantee a given delay or
delivery probability, but not too much so as to reduce the bandwidth, energy,
and memory consumption.
