7.1 Future Work

7.      CONCLUSION

In this final chapter, a brief summary of the research and development work is provided. A recommendation for future work is concluded and conclusions of the research objectives and results are discussed.

In the beginning, an introduction and objective to the thesis work was presented. A comparison between TCP/IP and DTN was discussed. An email architecture and overview of similar work was given. Next, the design of TCP/IP mail system working using a DTN store and forward fundamentals is discussed including the network protocol design followed by offline email system detail design. The idea of using database synchronization as DTN store and forward fundamentals is discussed. Then, the system implementation issues and implementation details of server computer, web server application, mail server, mail client and database synchronization. Lastly, the system test and result of the offline email system was presented.

7.1  Future Work

There is a possibility of this offline email system can support Government’s “Kampung Tanpa Wayar” project where it can benefit in term of cost to expand a portion of internet access such as the email application to rural area. It is also good to improve email security by implementing encrypt and decrypt process in data synchronization between Mail Server and infomediary device. A proper dedicated online mail server with a static IP internet connection is better to replace the current approach to reduce dependency to external services such as DtDNS. This will improve reliability of the system. Additional mail client feature can be added such as email labeling, priority email, send and achieve message etc. Database synchronization speed can be improved with better hardware, especially when dealing with many mail data and bigger attachment files. In the process of database synchronization, there is a need of checking the database path availability continuously between server computer and infomediary device. This process will consume much more power while in rural area there is are constrained that there is a need to conserve power consumption since the power in rural area mostly dependable to electric power generator. Instead of continuously checking the database path availability, the process can be done by checking the database path availability at a set of time or only when the infomediary device is available in the server computer network.