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Several billion people currently lack reliable access to the Internet and, thus, to a tremendous source of knowledge. In this paper, we describe a field-tested communication approach combining CubeSat platforms and delay-tolerant networking (DTN) solutions to provide asynchronous connectivity to populations and regions that are underserved by the Internet. The resulting class of networks is known as ring road networks (RRN), a networking approach that is built on technology developed for the construction of a Solar System Internet. The necessary selfsufficiency of DTN nodes enables network access to be deployed incrementally at low cost, supporting communities that cannot be profitably served by Internet satellite constellations. We present the RRN architecture and evaluate the expected performance by means of simulations. Based on the latter, we discuss 𝜇D3TN: a lightweight and open-source DTN protocol stack for RRNs and other DTN classes. 𝜇D3TN has been flight-tested in ESA's OPS-SAT in low-Earth orbit (LEO) during December 2020 and May 2021. This work discusses the experiment results as we validated the RRN approach in concrete application use cases. The reported outcomes motivate a new application domain.

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The recent discovery of potentially habitable planets orbiting the TRAPPIST-1 system intensified interest in interstellar exploration. In these challenging mission concepts, communication protocols would need to cope with unprecedented signal propagation delays. In this work, we propose and explore Delay Tolerant Networking (DTN) technologies and analyze in a case study based on the TRAPPIST-1. Results suggests that DTN protocols features could become a valuable means to achieve data delivery in future interstellar networks.