16

Routing in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Fenglien Lee
University of Guam
Guam 96923,
USA
1. Introduction
A mobile ad hoc network (MANET), sometimes called a mobile mesh network, is a
self- configuring network of mobile devices connected by wireless links. In other words, a
MANET is a collection of communication nodes that wish to communicate with each other,
but has no fixed infrastructure and no predetermined topology of wireless links. Each node
in a MANET is free to move independently in any direction, and will therefore change its
links to other devices frequently. Individual nodes are responsible for dynamically
discovering other nodes that they can directly communicate with. Due to the limitation
of signal transmission range in each node, not all nodes can directly communicate with each
other. Each node must forward traffic unrelated to its own use, and therefore be a router.
The primary challenge in building a MANET is equipping each device to continuously
maintain the information required to properly route traffic. Therefore, nodes are required to
relay packets on behalf of other nodes in order to deliver data across the network. A
significant feature of ad hoc networks is that changes in connectivity and link characteristics
are introduced due to node mobility and power control practices.
Ad hoc networks can be built around any wireless technology, including infrared, radio
frequency (RF), global positioning system (GPS), and so on. Usually, each node is equipped
with a transmitter and a receiver to communicate with other nodes [Lee2009] [Wiki2010a].
1.1 Routing in a MANET
The absence of fixed infrastructure in a MANET poses several types of challenges. The
biggest challenge among them is routing. Routing is the process of selecting paths in a
network along which to send data packets. An ad hoc routing protocol is a convention, or
standard, that controls how nodes decide which way to route packets between computing
devices in a mobile ad-hoc network.
In ad hoc networks, nodes do not start out familiar with the topology of their networks;
instead, they have to discover it. The basic idea is that a new node may announce its
presence and should listen for announcements broadcast by its neighbors. Each node learns
about nearby nodes and how to reach them, and may announce that it can reach them too.
The routing process usually directs forwarding on the basis of routing tables which
maintain a record of the routes to various network destinations. Thus, constructing routing
tables, which are held in the router's memory, is very important for efficient routing
[Lee2009][Wiki2010b].

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1.2 Routing protocols for MANET

The growth of laptops and 802.11/Wi-Fi wireless networking has made MANETs a popular
research topic since the 1990s. Many academic papers evaluate protocols and abilities
assuming varying degrees of mobility within a bounded space, usually with all nodes
within a few hops of each other and usually with nodes sending data at a constant rate.
Different protocols are then evaluated based on the packet drop rate, average routing load,
average end-to-end-delay, and other measures. The proposed solutions for routing protocols
could be grouped in three categories: proactive (or table-driven), reactive (or on-demand),
and hybrid protocols. Even the reactive protocols have become the main stream for MANET
routing. In this chapter, we introduce some popular routing protocols in each of the three
categories and for IPv6 networks [Lee2009][Wiki2010a][Wiki2010c].
1.3 Applications for MANET
Ad hoc networks are suited for use in situations where infrastructure is either not available
or not trusted, such as a communication network for military soldiers in a field, a mobile
network of laptop computers in a conference or campus setting, temporary offices in a
campaign headquarters, wireless sensor networks for biological research, mobile social
networks such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, and mobile mesh networks for Wi-Fi
devices [Lee2009].

2. Proactive routing protocols

Every proactive routing protocol usually needs to maintain accurate information in their
routing tables. It attempts to continuously evaluate all of the routes within a network. This
means the protocol maintains fresh lists of destinations and their routes by periodically
distributing routing tables throughout the network. So that when a packet needs to be
forwarded, a route is already known and can be used immediately. Once the routing tables
are setup, then data (packets) transmissions will be as fast and easy as in the tradition wired
networks.
Unfortunately, it is a big overhead to maintain routing tables in the mobile ad hoc network
environment. Therefore, the proactive routing protocols have the following common
disadvantages:
1. Respective amount of data for maintaining routing information.
2. Slow reaction on restructuring network and failures of individual nodes.
Proactive routing protocols became less popular after more and more reactive routing
protocols were introduced. In this section, we introduce three popular proactive routing
protocols DSDV, WRP and OLSR. Besides the three popular protocols, there are many
other proactive routing protocols for MNAET, such as CGSR, HSR, MMRP and so on
[Wiki2010c][Sholander2002].
2.1 Destination-Sequenced Distance Vector (DSDV)
Destination-Sequenced Distance-Vector Routing (DSDV) is a table-driven routing scheme
for ad hoc mobile networks based on the Bellman-Ford algorithm. It was developed by C.
Perkins and P. Bhagwat in 1994. The main contribution of the algorithm was to solve the
routing loop problem. Each entry in the routing table contains a sequence number. If a link
presents the sequence numbers are even generally, otherwise an odd number is used. The

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number is generated by the destination, and the emitter needs to send out the next update
with this number. Routing information is distributed between nodes by sending full dumps
infrequently and smaller incremental updates more frequently.

For example the routing table of Node A in the above network is

Destination Next Hop Number of Hops Sequence Number Install Time
A
A
0
A46
001000
B
B
1
B36
001200
C
B
2
C28
001500
Naturally the table contains description of all possible paths reachable by node A, along
with the next hop, number of hops, sequence number and install time.
Selection of Route
If a router receives new information, then it uses the latest sequence number. If the sequence
number is the same as the one already in the table, the route with the better metric is used.
Stale entries are those entries that have not been updated for a while. Such entries as well as
the routes using those nodes as next hops are deleted. Then new destination comes. This is
how it works.
Influence
Since no formal specification of this algorithm is present, there is no commercial
implementation of this algorithm. But some other protocols have used similar techniques.
The best-known sequenced distance vector protocol is AODV, which, by virtue of being a
reactive protocol, can use simpler sequencing heuristics. Besides, Babel is a distance-vector
routing protocol for IPv4 and IPv6 with fast convergence properties. It was designed to
make DSDV more robust, more efficient and more widely applicable for both wireless mesh
networks and classical wired networks while staying within the framework of proactive
protocols [Abohansen2009].
Advantages
DSDV was one of the early algorithms available. It is quite suitable for creating ad hoc
networks with small number of nodes.
Disadvantages
DSDV requires a regular update of its routing tables, which uses up battery power and a
small amount of bandwidth even when the network is idle. Also, whenever the topology of
the network changes, a new sequence number is necessary before the network re-converges;
thus, DSDV is not suitable for highly dynamic networks [Wiki2010d][Perkins94].

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2.2 Wireless Routing Protocol (WRP)

The Wireless Routing Protocol (WRP) is a proactive unicast routing protocol for MANETs.
WRP uses an enhanced version of the distance-vector routing protocol, which uses the
Bellman-Ford algorithm to calculate paths. Because of the mobile nature of the nodes within
the MANET, the protocol introduces mechanisms which reduce route loops and ensure
reliable message exchanges.
The wireless routing protocol (WRP), similar to DSDV, inherits the properties of the
distributed Bellman-Ford algorithm. To solve the count-to-infinity problem and to enable
faster convergence, it employs a unique method of maintaining information regarding the
shortest path to every destination node and the penultimate hop node on the path to every
destination node in the network. Since WRP, like DSDV, maintains an up-to-date view of
the network, every node has a readily available route to every destination node in the
network. It differs from DSDV in table maintenance and in the update procedures. While
DSDV maintains only one topology table, WRP uses a set of tables to maintain more
accurate information. The tables that are maintained by a node are the following: distance
table (DT), routing table (RT), link cost table (LCT), and a message retransmission list
(MRL).
Distance Table
The DT contains the network view of the neighbors of a node. It contains a matrix where
each element contains the distance and the penultimate node reported by a neighbor for a
particular destination.
Routing Table
The RT contains the up-to-date view of the network for all known destinations. It keeps the
shortest distance, the predecessor node (penultimate node), the successor node (the next
node to reach the destination), and a flag indicating the status of the path. The path status
may be a simple path (correct), or a loop (error), or the destination node not marked (null,
invalid route). Note, storing the previous and successive nodes assists in detecting loops and
avoiding the counting-to-infinity problem - a shortcoming of Distance Vector Routing.
Link Cost Table
The LCT contains the cost (e.g., the number of hops to reach the destination) of relaying
messages through each link. The cost of a broken link is infinity. It also contains the number
of update periods (intervals between two successive periodic updates) passed since the last
successful update was received from that link. This is used to detect link breaks.
The LCT maintains the cost of the link to its nearest neighbors (nodes within direct
transmission range), and the number of timeouts since successfully receiving a message
from the neighbor. Nodes periodically exchange routing tables with their neighbors via
update messages, or whenever the link cost table changes.
Message Retransmission List
The MRL contains an entry for every update message that is to be retransmitted and
maintains a counter for each entry. This counter is decremented after every retransmission
of an update message. Each update message contains a list of updates. A node also marks
each node in the RT that has to acknowledge the update message it transmitted. Once the
counter reaches zero, the entries in the update message for which no acknowledgments have
been received are to be retransmitted and the update message is deleted. Thus, a node

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detects a link break by the number of update periods missed since the last successful
transmission. After receiving an update message, a node not only updates the distance for
transmission neighbors but also checks the other neighbors distance, hence convergence is
much faster than DSDV. The MRL maintains a list of which neighbors are yet to
acknowledge an update message, so they can be retransmitted if necessary. If there is no
change in the routing table, a node is required to transmit a hello message to affirm its
connectivity. When an update message is received, a node updates its distance table and
reassesses the best route paths. It also carries out a consistency check with its neighbors, to
help eliminate loops and speed up convergence.
Advantages
WRP has the same advantage as that of DSDV. In addition, it has faster convergence and
involves fewer table updates.
Disadvantages
The complexity of maintenance of multiple tables demands a larger memory and greater
processing power from nodes in the wireless ad hoc network. At high mobility, the control
overhead involved in updating table entries is almost the same as that of DSDV and hence is
not suitable for a highly dynamic and for a very large ad hoc wireless network as it suffers
from limited scalability [Wiki2010e][Murthy1996].
2.3 Optimized Link State Routing (OLSR)
The Optimized Link State Routing Protocol (OLSR) is an IP routing protocol optimized for
mobile ad-hoc networks, which can also be used on other wireless ad-hoc networks. OLSR is
a proactive link-state routing protocol, which uses Hello and Topology Control (TC)
messages to discover and then disseminate link state information throughout the mobile adhoc network. Individual nodes use this topology information to compute next hop
destinations for all nodes in the network using shortest hop forwarding paths.
Features Specific to OLSR
Link-state routing protocols such as OSPF and IS-IS elect a designated router on every link to
perform flooding of topology information. In wireless ad-hoc networks, there is different
notion of a link, packets can go out the same interface; hence, a different approach is needed
in order to optimize the flooding process. Using Hello messages the OLSR protocol at each
node discovers 2-hop neighbor information and performs a distributed election of a set of
multipoint relays (MPRs). Nodes select MPRs such that there is a path to each of its 2-hop
neighbors via a node selected as an MPR. These MPR nodes then forward TC messages that
contain the MPR selectors. This functioning of MPRs makes OLSR unique from other link
state routing protocols in a few different ways: The forwarding path for TC messages is not
shared among all nodes but varies depending on the source, only a subset of nodes source
link state information, not all links of a node are advertised but only those that represent
MPR selections.
Since link-state routing requires the topology database to be synchronized across the
network, OSPF (Open Shortest Path First) and IS-IS (Intermediate System to Intermediate
System) perform topology flooding using a reliable algorithm. Such an algorithm is very
difficult to design for ad-hoc wireless networks, so OLSR doesn't bother with reliability; it
simply floods topology data often enough to make sure that the database does not remain
unsynchronized for extended periods of time.

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Messages Used in OLSR

OLSR uses the "Hello" messages to find its one hop neighbors and its two hop
neighbors through their responses. The sender can then select its multipoint relays (MPR)
OLSR uses the "Hello" messages to find its one hop neighbors and its two hop
neighbors through their responses. The sender can then select its multipoint relays (MPR)
based on the one hop node that offers the best routes to the two hop nodes. Each node has
also an MPR selector set, which enumerates nodes that have selected it as an MPR node.
OLSR uses Topology Control (TC) messages along with MPR forwarding to disseminate
neighbor information throughout the network. Host and Network Association (HNA)
messages are used by OLSR to disseminate network route advertisements in the same way
TC messages advertise host routes. Below are the formats of Topology and Hello Control
messages.
1. Topology Control Message

0 (bits 0-9)
1 (bits 10-19)
2 (bits 20-29)
1 . 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
.
9
ANSN
Reserved
Advertised Neighbor Main Address
Advertised Neighbor Main Address

3
0

Note: Each row has 32 bits.

2. Hello Control Message

0 (bits 0-9)
1
.

9 0 1
Reserved

Link Code

Link Code

2 (bits 20-29)
3
9 0 1 2 3 4 . 9 0 1
Htime
Willingness
Reserved
Link Message Size
Neighbor Interface Address
Neighbor Interface Address
.
.
Reserved
Link Message Size
Neighbor Interface Address
Neighbor Interface Address
2

1 (bits 10-19)
3 4 5 6

Advantages
Being a proactive protocol, routes to all destinations within the network are known and
maintained before use. Having the routes available within the standard routing table can be
useful for some systems and network applications as there is no route discovery delay
associated with finding a new route. The routing overhead generated, while generally greater
than that of a reactive protocol, does not increase with the number of routes being used.
Default and network routes can be injected into the system by HNA (Host and Network
Association) messages allowing for connection to the internet or other networks within the
OLSR MANET cloud. Network routes using reactive protocols do not currently execute
well. Timeout values and validity information is contained within the messages conveying
information allowing for differing timer values to be used at differing nodes.

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Disadvantages
The original definition of OLSR does not include any provisions for sensing of link quality;
it simply assumes that a link is up if a number of hello packets have been received recently.
This assumes that links are bi-modal (either working or failed), which is not necessarily
the case on wireless networks, where links often exhibit intermediate rates of packet
loss.
Implementations such as the open source OLSRD (OLSR Daemon, commonly used on
Linux-based mesh routers) have been extended (as of v. 0.4.8) with link quality sensing.
Being a proactive protocol, OLSR uses power and network resources in order to propagate
data about possibly unused routes. While this is not a problem for wired access points, and
laptops, it makes OLSR unsuitable for sensor networks that try to sleep most of the time. For
small scale wired access points with low CPU power, the open source OLSRD project
showed that large scale mesh networks can run with OLSRD on thousands of nodes with
very little CPU power on 200 MHz embedded devices.
Being a link-state protocol, OLSR requires a reasonably large amount of bandwidth and
CPU power to compute optimal paths in the network. In the typical networks where OLSR
is used (which rarely exceed a few hundreds of nodes), this does not appear to be a problem.
By only using MPRs to flood topology information, OLSR removes some of the redundancy
of the flooding process, which may be a problem in networks with moderate to large packet
loss rates - however the MPR mechanism is self-pruning (which means that in case of packet
losses, some nodes that would not have retransmitted a packet may do so).
OLSR Version 2
OLSRv2 is currently being developed within the IETF. It maintains many of the key features
of the original including MPR selection and dissemination. Key differences are the flexibility
and modular design using shared components: packet format, and neighborhood discovery
protocol (NHDP). These components are being designed to be common among next
generation IETF MANET protocols. Differences in the handling of multiple address and
interface enabled nodes is also present between OLSR and OLSRv2 [Abohansen2009]
[Wiki2010f][Clausen2003].

3. Reactive routing protocols

In bandwidth-starved and power-starved environments, it is interesting to keep the network
silent when there is no traffic to be routed. Reactive routing protocols do not maintain
routes, but build them on demand. A reactive protocol finds a route on demand by flooding
the network with Route Request packets. These protocols have the following advantages:
1. No big overhead for global routing table maintenance as in proactive protocols.
2. Quick reaction for network restructure and node failure.
Even reactive protocols have become the main stream for MANET routing, they still have
the following main disadvantages:
1. High latency time in route finding.
2. Excessive flooding can lead to network clogging.
There are many reactive routing protocols for MANET. We only introduce three popular
(AODV, DSR and DYMO) and one new (ODCR) protocols in this section [Wiki2010c].

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3.1 Ad hoc On-demand Distance Vector (AODV)

Ad hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV) Routing is a routing protocol for mobile ad
hoc networks (MANETs) and other wireless ad-hoc networks. It is jointly developed in
Nokia Research Center, University of California, Santa Barbara and University of Cincinnati
by C. Perkins, E. Belding-Royer and S. Das. AODV is capable of both unicast and multicast
routing. It is a reactive routing protocol, meaning that it establishes a route to a destination
only on demand. In contrast, the most common routing protocols of the Internet are
proactive, meaning they find routing paths independently of the usage of the paths. AODV
is, as the name indicates, a distance-vector routing protocol. AODV avoids the counting-toinfinity problem of other distance-vector protocols by using sequence numbers on route
updates, a technique pioneered by DSDV.
In AODV, the network is silent until a connection is needed. At that point the network node
that needs a connection broadcasts a request for connection. Other AODV nodes forward
this message, and record the node that they heard it from, creating an explosion of
temporary routes back to the needy node. When a node receives such a message and already
has a route to the desired node, it sends a message backwards through a temporary
route to the requesting node. The needy node then begins using the route that has the least
number of hops through other nodes. Unused entries in the routing tables are recycled after
a time. When a link fails, a routing error is passed back to a transmitting node, and the
process repeats.
Much of the complexity of the protocol is to lower the number of messages to conserve the
capacity of the network. For example, each request for a route has a sequence number.
Nodes use this sequence number so that they do not repeat route requests that they have
already passed on. Another such feature is that the route requests have a "time to live"
number that limits how many times they can be retransmitted. The third feature is that if a
route request fails, another route request may not be sent until twice as much time has
passed as the timeout of the previous route request.
Technical Description
The AODV Routing protocol uses an on-demand approach for finding routes, that is, a route
is established only when it is required by a source node for transmitting data packets. It
employs destination sequence numbers to identify the most recent path. The major
difference between AODV and Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) is that DSR uses source
routing in which a data packet carries the complete path to be traversed; however, in
AODV, the source node and the intermediate nodes store the next-hop information
corresponding to each flow for data packet transmission.
In an on-demand routing protocol, the source node floods the RouteRequest packet in the
network when a route is not available for the desired destination. It may obtain multiple
routes to different destinations from a single RouteRequest. The major difference between
AODV and other on-demand routing protocols is that it uses a destination sequence number
(DestSeqNum) to determine an up-to- date path to the destination. A node updates its path
information only if the DestSeqNum of the current packet received is greater than the last
DestSeqNum stored at the node.
A RouteRequest carries the source identifier (SrcID), the destination identifier (DestID), the
source sequence number (SrcSeqNum), the destination sequence number (DestSeqNum), the
broadcast identifier (BcastID), and the time to live (TTL) field. DestSeqNum indicates the

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freshness of the route that is accepted by the source. When an intermediate node receives a
RouteRequest, it either forwards it or prepares a RouteReply if it has a valid route to the
destination. The validity of a route at the intermediate node is determined by comparing the
sequence number at the intermediate node with the destination sequence number in the
RouteRequest packet. If a RouteRequest is received multiple times, which is indicated by the
BcastID-SrcID pair, the duplicate copies are discarded. All intermediate nodes having valid
routes to the destination, or the destination node itself, are allowed to send RouteReply
packets to the source.
Every intermediate node, while forwarding a RouteRequest, enters the previous node
address and its BcastID. A timer is used to delete this entry in case a RouteReply is not
received before the timer expires. This helps in storing an active path at the intermediate
node as AODV does not employ source routing of data packets. When a node receives a
RouteReply packet, information about the previous node from which the packet was
received is also stored in order to forward the data packet to this next node as the next hop
toward the destination.
Advantages
The main advantage of this protocol is that routes are established on demand and
destination sequence numbers are used to find the latest route to the destination. The
connection setup delay is lower. It creates no extra traffic for communication along existing
links. Also, distance vector routing is simple, and doesn't require much memory or
calculation.
Disadvantages
AODV requires more time to establish a connection, and the initial communication to
establish a route is heavier than some other approaches. Also, intermediate nodes can lead
to inconsistent routes if the source sequence number is very old and the intermediate nodes
have a higher but not the latest destination sequence number, thereby having stale entries.
Also multiple RouteReply packets in response to a single RouteRequest packet can lead to
heavy control overhead. Another disadvantage of AODV is that the periodic beaconing
leads to unnecessary bandwidth consumption [Wiki2010g] [Perkins2003].
3.2 Dynamic Source Routing
Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) is a routing protocol for wireless mesh networks. It is
similar to AODV in that it forms a route on-demand when a transmitting computer requests
one. However, it uses source routing instead of relying on the routing table at each
intermediate device. Many successive refinements have been made to DSR, including
DSRFLOW.
Determining source routes requires accumulating the address of each device between the
source and destination during route discovery. The accumulated path information is cached
by nodes processing the route discovery packets. The learned paths are used to route
packets. To accomplish source routing, the routed packets contain the address of each
device the packet will traverse. This may result in high overhead for long paths or large
addresses, like IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6). To avoid using source routing, DSR
optionally defines a flow id option that allows packets to be forwarded on a hop-by-hop
basis.

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This protocol is truly based on source routing whereby all the routing information is
maintained (continually updated) at mobile nodes. It has only two major phases which are
Route Discovery and Route Maintenance. Route Reply would only be generated if the
message has reached the intended destination node (route record which is initially
contained in Route Request would be inserted into the Route Reply).
To return the Route Reply, the destination node must have a route to the source node. If the
route is in the Destination Node's route cache, the route would be used. Otherwise, the node
will reverse the route based on the route record in the Route Reply message header (this
requires that all links are symmetric). In the event of fatal transmission, the Route
Maintenance Phase is initiated whereby the Route Error packets are generated at a node.
The erroneous hop will be removed from the node's route cache, all routes containing the
hop are truncated at that point. Again, the Route Discovery Phase is initiated to determine
the most viable route.
Dynamic source routing protocol (DSR) is an on-demand protocol designed to restrict the
bandwidth consumed by control packets in ad hoc wireless networks by eliminating the
periodic table-update messages required in the table-driven approach. The major difference
between this and the other on-demand routing protocols is that it is beacon-less and hence
does not require periodic hello packet (beacon) transmissions, which are used by a node to
inform its neighbors of its presence. The basic approach of this protocol (and all other ondemand routing protocols) during the route construction phase is to establish a route by
flooding RouteRequest packets in the network. The destination node, on receiving a
RouteRequest packet, responds by sending a RouteReply packet back to the source, which
carries the route traversed by the RouteRequest packet received.
Consider a source node that does not have a route to the destination. When it has data
packets to be sent to that destination, it initiates a RouteRequest packet. This RouteRequest
is flooded throughout the network. Each node, upon receiving a RouteRequest packet,
rebroadcasts the packet to its neighbors if it has not forwarded it already, provided that the
node is not the destination node and that the packets time to live (TTL) counter has not been
exceeded. Each RouteRequest carries a sequence number generated by the source node and
the path it has traversed.
A node, upon receiving a RouteRequest packet, checks the sequence number on the packet
before forwarding it. The packet is forwarded only if it is not a duplicate RouteRequest. The
sequence number on the packet is used to prevent loop formations and to avoid multiple
transmissions of the same RouteRequest by an intermediate node that receives it through
multiple paths. Thus, all nodes except the destination forward a RouteRequest packet
during the route construction phase. A destination node, after receiving the first
RouteRequest packet, replies to the source node through the reverse path the RouteRequest
packet had traversed.
Nodes can also learn about the neighboring routes traversed by data packets if operated in
the promiscuous mode (the mode of operation in which a node can receive the packets that
are neither broadcast nor addressed to itself). This route cache is also used during the route
construction phase. If an intermediate node receiving a RouteRequest with a route to the
destination node in its route cache, then it replies to the source node by sending a
RouteReply with the entire route information from the source node to the destination node.

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Advantages
This protocol uses a reactive approach which eliminates the need to periodically flood the
network with table update messages which are required in a table-driven approach. In a
reactive (on-demand) approach such as this, a route is established only when it is required
and hence the need to find routes to all other nodes in the network as required by the tabledriven approach is eliminated. The intermediate nodes also utilize the route cache
information efficiently to reduce the control overhead.
Disadvantages
The disadvantage of this protocol is that the route maintenance mechanism does not locally
repair a broken link. Stale route cache information could also result in inconsistencies
during the route reconstruction phase. The connection setup delay is higher than in tabledriven protocols. Even though the protocol performs well in static and low-mobility
environments, the performance degrades rapidly with increasing mobility. Also,
considerable routing overhead is involved due to the source-routing mechanism employed
in DSR. This routing overhead is directly proportional to the path length [Wiki2010h][AuYong2006][Johnson1994][Johnson2001].
3.3 Dynamic MANET On-Demand Routing (DYMO)
The DYMO routing protocol is a successor to the popular Ad hoc On-Demand Distance
Vector (AODV) routing protocol and shares many of its benefits. It is, however, slightly
easier to implement and designed with future enhancements in mind. DYMO can work as
both a proactive and as a reactive routing protocol, i.e. routes can be discovered just when
they are needed. In any way, to discover new routes the following two steps take place:
1. A special "Route Request" (RREQ) messages is broadcast through the MANET. Each
RREQ keeps an ordered list of all nodes it passed through, so every host receiving an
RREQ message can immediately record a route back to the origin of this message.
2. When an RREQ message arrives at its destination, a "Routing Reply" (RREP) message
will immediately get passed back to the origin, indicating that a route to the destination
was found. On its way back to the source, an RREP message can simply backtrace the
way the RREQ message took and simultaneously allow all hosts it passes to record a
complementary route back to where it came from.
So as soon as the RREP message reaches its destination, a two-way route was successfully
recorded by all intermediate hosts, and exchange of data packets can commence.
Example

Carol

Dave

Alice

Bob

Step 1.

Alice wants to exchange data with Bob

Alice does not know a route to Bob yet, so it broadcasts a new RREQ for a route to Bob
containing only information about itself.

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Step 2.

Carol receives Alice's RREQ, remembers the contained information about how to reach
Alice (directly), then appends information about itself and re-broadcasts the packets.
Step 3.

Dave receives Carol's RREQ, remembers the contained information about how to reach
Carol (directly) and Alice (via Carol), then appends information about itself and rebroadcasts the packet.

At the same time, Alice also receives Carol's RREQ. Closer examination of the contained
information reveals that even the very first information block - how to reach itself, Alice
- is of no use. It thus discards the RREQ and does not re- broadcast it as Dave did.
Step 4.

Bob receives Dave's RREQ and remembers the contained information about how to
reach Dave (directly), Carol (via Dave) and Alice (also via Dave). Realizing that he is the
target of the RREQ he creates an RREP containing information about itself. He marks
the RREP bound for Alice and - knowing that Dave can somehow reach Alice - sends it
to Dave.

Again, at the same time, Carol also receives Dave's RREQ, but - following the same
logic as Alice before - ignores it.
Step 5.

Dave receives the RREP to Alice sent by Bob, remembers the information on how to
reach Bob (directly), appends information about itself and - knowing that Alice can be
reached via Carol, sends it to Carol.
Step 6.

Carol receives the RREP to Alice sent by Dave, remembers the contained information on
how to reach Dave (directly) and Bob (via Dave), then appends information about itself
and - knowing that Alice can be reached directly, sends it to Alice.
Step 7.

Alice receives the RREP sent to her by Carol and remembers all information on how to
reach Carol (directly), Dave (via Carol) and - most importantly - Bob (also via Carol).
Now knowing how to reach Bob she can finally send her data packet for him to Carol.
Step 8.

Carol receives the data packet for Bob from Alice. Because she knows Dave can reach
Bob she forwards the packet to him.
Step 9.

Dave receives the data packet for Bob. Because he knows Bob can be directly reached by
him, he forwards the packet to him.
Step 10.

Bob receives the data packet. Still knowing how to reach Alice, he could now respond
with one of his own, and the process repeats until communications are complete or the
network changes (e.g. Carol leaves or Eileen joins), where it may be necessary to search
the network again for a route [Wiki2010i] [Chakeres2008].
3.4 On-Demand Cache Routing protocol
This protocol presents an efficient algorithm for route discovery, route management and
mobility handling for on-demand routing. It is called as on-demand cache routing
(ODCR) algorithm since it applies caches in each node to improve the routing performance.

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In the MANET, each node equips L-1 (level 1 or primary) and L-2 (level 2 or secondary)
caches. Usually, the size of L-1 cache is about 64 to 256 KB and L-2 cache is about 256 KB to
2MB). For memory address mapping, they use 2-, 4- or 8-way set associative scheme. Each
data entry in a cache is called a cache line. Most caches use the least-recently-used (LRU)
policy for cache line replacement. All cache lines can be searched in parallel in a few
processor cycles. This is an important reason why many routing protocols adopted cache for
route management. This cache is called as route cache because it stores the routing
information in the network.
For the initial settings of a MANET, this protocol assumes (1) the communication media
among nodes (e.g. laptop computers) is RF; (2) each node has an identification (ID) number;
(3) each node keeps an ID list in its own cache (see Figure 1); (4) the wireless links in the
network are symmetric (i.e. bi-directional transmission); and (5) the network is scalable and
heterogeneous. This means the number of nodes in the network is changeable anytime, and
the processor architecture, transmission radius and battery life of each node can be different.
In this section, we only present the main algorithm (ODCR). For detail operations of subalgorithms RDA and MHA mentioned in Algorithm ODCR below, please refer to [Lee2009].

7
5
3
2
6
4

Fig. 1. A simple MANET, where 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 are node IDs and solid edges are
wireless links within the RF transmission radius of each node. For example, node 5 can
transmits packets to nodes 3, 4, 6 and 7. In this MANET, each node has an ID list (1, 2, 3, 4,
5, 6, 7).
Algorithm: On-Demand Cache Routing (ODCR)
Inputs: Node identifications (IDs) in the MANET.
Outputs: Transmitted data packets on the network.
Begin
1. If any node in the network wants to send a data packet, at first it has to search the best
route (usually the least hop-count route) from its cache. If the route does not exist, go to
Step 2. Otherwise (i.e. the route exists) go to Step 3.
2. The source node looks up the destination node in its ID list (as in Figure 1). Then it
executes the Route Discovery Algorithm (RDA) to create the best route to its destination
node in the network. For instance, the best route from node 1 to node 6 is {1,2,4,6}.
3. The source node attaches its ID, destination node ID and the packet number to eachdata
packet, and sends the packet to the destination node along the best route.
4. Each intermediate node uses the best route to the destination node in its cache
toforward the data packet to the next or destination node.

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5. If any node leaves from, joins to, or moves around the network, it has to execute the
Mobility Handling Algorithm (MHA) to notify other nodes about this change and to
update their own route information in their caches.
6. Repeat Steps 1 to 5 until the whole network is terminated.
End of On-Demand Cache Routing.
In conclusion, this protocol proposed an efficient on-demand routing algorithm, called
ODCR, for route discovery and management, and mobility handling. The ODCR algorithm
applied the content-addressable and LRU replacement features in L-1 and L-2 caches for
route table creation, updating, and maintenance. The ODCR algorithm with duel-level
route caches solved most problems in on-demand routing, such as route tables in slow
main memory, long connection setup delay, broken link repairing, huge routing overhead
for long routes, lengthy data packet in source routing, sending beacons (hello packets)
periodically, control overhead for complicated IDs in data packets, to setup TTL (time-tolive) in a packet or a route path, and to update the stale routes in the route table or cache
frequently.
The simulation results showed that the ODCR algorithm outperforms AODV, DSR
(Dynamic Source Routing) and CSOR (Cache Scheme in On-Demand Routing) in packet
delivery rate, average end-to-end delay and average routing load [Lee2009].

4. Hybrid routing protocols

This type of protocols combines the advantages of proactive and reactive routings. The
routing is initially established with some proactively prospected routes and then serves the
demand from additionally activated nodes through reactive flooding. The choice for one or
the other method requires predetermination for typical cases. The main disadvantages of
such algorithms are:
1. Advantage depends on amount of nodes activated.
2. Reaction to traffic demand depends on gradient of traffic volume [Wiki2010j].
4.1 Zone Routing Protocol
Zone Routing Protocol (ZRP) was the first hybrid routing protocol with both a proactive and
a reactive routing component. ZRP was first introduced by Haas in 1997. ZRP is proposed to
reduce the control overhead of proactive routing protocols and decrease the latency caused
by routing discover in reactive routing protocols. ZRP defines a zone around each node
consisting of its k-neighborhood (e.g. k=3). That is, in ZRP, all nodes within k-hop distance
from node belong to the routing zone of node.
ZRP is formed by two sub-protocols, a proactive routing protocol: Intra-zone Routing
Protocol (IARP), is used inside routing zones and a reactive routing protocol: Inter-zone
Routing Protocol (IERP), is used between routing zones, respectively. A route to a
destination within the local zone can be established from the proactively cached routing
table of the source by IARP. Therefore, if the source and destination is in the same zone, the
packet can be delivered immediately. Most of the existing proactive routing algorithms can
be used as the IARP for ZRP.
For routes beyond the local zone, route discovery happens reactively. The source node
sends a route requests to its border nodes, containing its own address, the destination

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address and a unique sequence number. Border nodes are nodes which are exactly the
maximum number of hops to the defined local zone away from the source. The border
nodes check their local zone for the destination. If the requested node is not a member of
this local zone, the node adds its own address to the route request packet and forwards the
packet to its border nodes. If the destination is a member of the local zone of the node, it
sends a route reply on the reverse path back to the source. The source node uses the path
saved in the route reply packet to send data packets to the destination [Wiki2010k]
[Haas2002].
4.2 Order One Network Protocol
The Order One MANET Routing Protocol (OORP) is an algorithm for computer
communicating by digital radio in a mesh network to find each other, and send messages to
each other along a reasonably efficient path. It was designed for, and promoted as working
with wireless mesh networks. OORP can handle hundreds of nodes, where most other
protocols handle less than a hundred. OORP uses hierarchical algorithms to minimize the
total amount of transmissions needed for routing. Routing overhead is only about 1% to 5%
of node to node bandwidth in any network and does not grow as the network size grows.
The basic idea is that a network organizes itself into a tree. Nodes meet at the root of the tree
to establish an initial route. The route then moves away from the root by cutting corners, as
ant-trails do. When there are no more corners to cut, a nearly optimum route exists. This
route is continuously maintained. Each process can be performed with localized minimal
communication, and very small router tables. OORP requires about 200K of memory. A
simulated network with 500 nodes transmitting at 200 bytes/second organized itself in
about 20 seconds. As of 2004, OORP was patented or had other significant intellectual
property restrictions.
Assumptions
Each computer or "node" of the network has a unique name. At least one network link and a
computer with some capacity hold a list of neighbors.
Organizing a Tree
The network nodes form a hierarchy by having each node select a parent. The parent is a
neighbor node that is the next best step to the most other nodes. This method creates a
hierarchy around nodes that are more likely to be present, and which have more capacity,
and which are closer to the topological center of the network. The memory limitations of a
small node are reflected in its small routing table, which automatically prevents it from
being a preferred central node. At the top, one or two nodes are unable to find nodes betterconnected than themselves, and therefore become parents of the entire network. The
hierarchy-formation algorithm does not need a complex routing algorithm or large amounts
of communication.
Routing
All nodes push a route to themselves to the root of the tree. A node wanting a connection
can therefore push a request to the root of the tree, and always find a route. The commercial
protocol uses Dijkstra's algorithm to continuously optimize and maintain the route. As the
network moves and changes, the path is continually adjusted.

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Advantages
Assuming that some nodes in the network have enough memory to know of all nodes in the
network, there is no practical limitation to network size. Since the control bandwidth is
defined to be less than 5% regardless of network size, the amount of control bandwidth
required is not supposed to increase as network size grows. The system can use nodes with
small amounts of memory.
The network has a reliable, low-overhead way to establish that a node is not in the network.
This is a valuable property in ad-hoc mesh networks. Most routing protocols scale either by
reducing proactive link-state routing information or reactively driving routing by
connection requests. OORP mixes the proactive and reactive methods. Properly configured,
an OORP net can theoretically scale to 100,000's of nodes and can often achieve reasonable
performance even though it limits routing bandwidth to 5%.
Disadvantages
Central nodes have an extra burden because they need to have enough memory to store
information about all nodes in the network. At some number of nodes, the network will
therefore cease to scale. If all the nodes in the network are low capacity nodes the network
may be overwhelmed with change. This may limit the maximum scale. However, in real
world networks, the farther away from the edge nodes the more the bandwidth grows.
These critiques may have no practical effect. For example, consider a low bandwidth
9.6Kbit/second radio. If the protocol was configured to send one packet of 180 bytes every 5
seconds, it would consume 3% of overall network bandwidth. This one packet can contain
up to 80 route updates. Thus even in very low bandwidth network the protocol is still able
to spread a lot of route information. Given a 10Mbit connection, 3% of the bandwidth is
4,100 to 16,000 route updates per second. Since the protocol only sends route updates for
changes, it is rarely overwhelmed.
The other disadvantage is that public proposals for OORP do not include security or
authentication. Security and authentication may provided by the integrator of the protocol.
Typical security measures include encryption or signing the protocol packets and
incrementing counters to prevent replay attacks [Wiki2010l][Orderone2010].
4.3 Global On-Demand Routing protocol
The Global On-Demand Routing (GOR) is a clever hybrid routing protocol for the MANET.
To simplify simulations in GOR, it assumes (1) all nodes are homogeneous; (2) the
transmission range of each node is k; and (3) each node has an ID and a pair of positive x
and y coordinates to represent its location in the network. The main algorithm for the GOR
protocol is described below. For detail operations of sub-algorithms DFA and NRA in GOR
protocol, please refer to [Lee2007].
Algorithm GOR Protocol
Inputs: The ID and (x, y) coordinates of each node.
Outputs: Destination nodes receive data packets from sources nodes.
Begin
1. Select a center or near-center node in the initial network as the root node (RN).
2. The RN runs the Double-Flooding Algorithm (DFA) to create the location table (LT),
sorts the LT by IDs in ascending order, and broadcasts the LT to each node in the
network.

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3. Each node uses the LT to generate its own distance table (DT) concurrently. Then, each
node marks any distance that is longer than the transmission range k in the DT as
(infinity).
4. Each node calls the Dijkstras Algorithm to generate the one-to-all shortest-path table
(SPT) concurrently (see Figure 2 below).
5. If a new node joined to the network, an existing node moved out of the transmission
range of its any neighbor nodes, or an existing node left from the network, then it calls
the Node-Reorganization Algorithm (NRA) to ask other nodes to update (or mark as
new nodes if any) their own LT for these changes consequently.
6. If any node wants to send packets via or to the above joined or moved nodes, it has to
(1) use the updated LT in Step 5 to update its DT (or mark the distances if any); (2)
run the Dijkstras algorithm again to update its SPT; (3) reset all nodes in the LT to
old nodes; and (4) follows the paths in the new SPT to send packets to its destination
nodes.
7. If network topology changed again, repeat steps 5 and 6 until the whole network
dismissed.
End of GOR Protocol.
Figure 2 below shows some shortest paths within the transmission range k for node 1. In
this figure, the shortest path between nodes 1 and 6 is (1, 3, 6) not (1, 6) because node 6
locates outside the circular transmission range k of node 1. Note we have marked all
distances in steps 3 and 6 respectively in the main algorithm (Algorithm GOR Protocol).

Fig. 2. Sample shortest paths in a MANET.

This algorithm proposed a hybrid global on-demand routing (called GOR) protocol for
mobile ad hoc networks. This protocol does not update the routing tables immediately if
any node changed its status in the network, such as movement, addition or deletion.
Instead, it only handles a node whose move changed the MANET topology or whose move
distance is greater than the transmission range k. This critical strategy prevents other nodes
from updating the routing tables frequently and hence reducing unnecessary computation
and node-reorganization overheads dramatically.
The GOR protocol not only keeps the advantages of proactive and reactive protocols, but
also improves the sub-optimal routing overhead and memory consuming problems in local
hybrid protocols. Because this protocol retains high packet delivery rate and low end-to-end
delay as the DSDV and WRP protocols, and low routing load as the AODV and DSR
protocols [Lee2007].

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5. MANET routing protocols for IPv6

It is possible that all the IP version 4 (IPv4) addresses will be allocated in next decade. The
transition from IP version 4 to IP version 6 (IPv6) will become an important issue in
computer networks and Internet in recent years. Therefore, in this section, we introduce
IPv6, mobile IPv6, and two popular MANET routing protocols, OLSR and AODV, for IPv6
networks.
5.1 Introduction to IPv6 and mobile IPv6
Internet is built upon a protocol suite called TCP/IP. This abbreviation stands for
Transmission Control Protocol, and Internet Protocol. When your computer communicates
with the Internet a unique IP address is used to transfer and receive information. Yesterdays
IP standard is called IPv4. Each IPv4 address contains 32 binary bits. That is the total
address in IPv4 is 2^32 only. Sadly most ISPs and services still only deliver this ancient
technology standardized in September 1981. So far, most of IPv4 addresses are already tied
up and the Internet is simply running out of IPs. The address shortage problem is
aggravated by the fact that portions of the IP address space have not been efficiently
allocated.
IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) gives citizens the opportunity to become real Internet
participants. IPv4 makes citizens into passive consumers who are only able to connect to
compartmentalized networks run by companies or governments. This is why the
establishment does not want IPv6. Each IPv6 address contains 128 binary bits. This means
there are 2^128 unique addresses in IPv6. This huge amount of IP addresses may be able to
serve the Internet till the end of this century [Linux2010a].
Mobile IPv6 is the implementation of the IP mobility (Mobile IP) methods and protocols on
an Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) network. Like its IPv4 counterpart, it is designed to
permit IP devices to roam between different networks without losing IP connectivity by
maintaining a permanent Internet Protocol (IP) address. Mobile IPv6 is described in
RFC3775.
The key benefit of Mobile IPv6 is that even though the mobile node changes locations and
addresses, the existing connections through which the mobile node is communicating are
maintained. To accomplish this, connections to mobile nodes are made with a specific
address that is always assigned to the mobile node, and through which the mobile node is
always reachable. Mobile IPv6 provides Transport layer connection survivability when a
node moves from one link to another by performing address maintenance for mobile nodes
at the Internet layer [Wiki2010m].
5.2 OLSR for IPv6 networks
In this section, we summarize the proposed issues and necessary changes to adapt OLSR to
IPv6 from the paper OLSR for IPv6 Networks by Laouiti, etc [Laouiti2004]. In order to
present a complete IPv6 solution for OLSR, there are several issues to address:
1. Addressing: IPv6 introduce several changes, some more conceptual than others.
Changes include the diffusion of data packets and existing multiple addresses of
Interfaces.

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3.
4.

317

Protocol changes: The OLSR specification gives the protocol format message for IPv4
packets, but some additional changes are proposed.
Neighbor discovery: It is described how the neighbor discovery mechanism of IPv6 still
operates properly.
Autoconfiguration: It is loosely related to addressing, the ability for an IPv6 node to
self-configure its addressed yields numerous challenges and had been the subject of
elaborate research as seen previously.

IPv6 Ad Hoc Addressing Issues

Several changes are required due to various novelties introduced by IPv6 itself.
1. Interface Addresses: The chosen solution in this paper is to consider a MANET as a single
site-local network, and to use site-local prefix with a fixed 16 bits subnet called
OLSR_SUBNET. Then, an OLSR node will perform link-local address autoconfiguration,
and upon success, will automatically configure for each of its OLSR interfaces. The sitelocal address with that subnet (FEC0:0:0:OLSR_ SUBNET::/64) will run the OLSR protocol
using it.
2. OSLR Diffusion Addresses: In order to reach all the nodes present on the link to get the
same effect as in IPv4, this paper proposed that a multicast address ALL_OLSR_NODES
is used for the destination address. The ALL_OLSR_NODES could be taken as
ALL_LINK_NODES (FF01::1). Also since a node has several interface addresses, the paper
proposed that the site-local addresses are used as source addresses.
Diffusing Non-OLSR Packets
Since MANETs are multi-hop routing networks, in order to flood packets to all nodes,
retransmissions are usually needed. With OLSR, packets are retransmitted hop by hop to
the direct neighborhood by using MPRs (multipoint relays). In the other hand, for any
applications, a direct multicast on the local link is performed and such packets are never
routed. For instance, it is also in the case for most of IPv6 messages for neighbor discovery
and autoconfiguration. This relies on the assumption that being on the same network
is equivalent to being on same link, an assumption which doesnt hold in MANET networks.
As a result, in a multi-hop network, by default, this kind of messages will not be
delivered to all nodes. This paper proposed two solutions to diffuse non-OLSR packets to all
nodes:
1. Encapsulate the packets in specific OLSR messages, and use the MPR flooding.
2. Use of a new multicast address called ALL-MANET_NODES, instead of the
ALL_LINK_NODES.
Changes to the OLSR Routing Protocol
1.

2.

OLSR Packet format: The essential change needed for the existing OLSR packet format
is to replace the IPv4 addresses with the IPv6 addresses in all messages, as highlighted
in the OLSR specification [Clausen2003].
Multiple Interface Addresses: In IPv6, an interface can have several addresses. This
paper proposed an OLSR node, for each interface, will have:

A link-local address: This address is usually obtained by autoconfiguration. It is

temporary used as the source address for OLSR packets before autoconfiguration is
completed.

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A site-local address: This is derived from the link-local address, in the fixed subnet
OLSR_SUBNET for site-local prefix. This address is permanently used as the source
for all OLSR packets, once autoconfiguration is completed.
Any number (possibly zero) of additional global or site local unicast addresses,
which are automatically or manually configured.

Neighbor Discovery
In IPv6, nodes (hosts and routers) use Neighbor Discovery [Narten1998] to determine the
MAC addresses for neighbors on attached links and to quickly purge invalid cache values.
Hosts also use Neighbor Discovery to find neighboring routers that are willing to forward
packets on their behalf. Finally, nodes use the protocol to actively keep track of which
neighbors are reachable and which are not, and to detect changed MAC addresses.
Routing table in the OLSR indicates the next hop for each reachable destination in the
network. This next hop is one of the direct neighbors. This means that the neighbor
solicitation for address resolution will work without any modification. In OLSR, gateways
declare themselves to the entire network periodically. The neighbor discovery is adapted to
OLSR. Consequently it is not necessary to do any modification to the classical procedure.
Autoconfiguration
IPv6 Stateless Address Autoconfiguration is based on several steps: after the creation of a
link local address, the node must check whether the address is already in use by another
interface of another node, somewhere in the network. In wired network, this means that all
the links of the attached interfaces of the node are probed. If the address is not unique the
process is interrupted, otherwise the autoconfiguration was successful and the address may
be safely used.
In a MANET, the nodes on the links of the attached interfaces would include only the nodes
with an interface within radio reach of the transmitter and not all the participating nodes.
Hence, the uniqueness of the address is not guaranteed if the classical DAD (Duplicate
Address Detection) procedure is applied. This paper proposed an algorithm, following the
philosophy of the IPv6 DAD, to perform autoconfiguration in an OLSR network. The
algorithm includes reactive probing (i.e. sending a request to the whole network and
waiting for a possible answer), proactive checking (i.e. checking periodically for duplicate
addresses) and collision resolution (i.e. what should be done upon detection of duplicate
addresses) [Laouiti2004][Linux2010b].
5.3 Ad hoc On-demand Distance Vector routing for IPv6 (AODV6)
The operation of AODV for IPv6 is intended to mirror the operation of AODV for IPv4, with
changes necessary to allow for transmission of 128-bit addresses in IPv6 instead of the
traditional 32-bit addresses in IPv4.
Route Request (RREQ) Message Format
The format of the IPv6 Route Request message (RREQ) contains the same fields with the
same functions as the RREQ message defined for IP version 4, except as follows:
1. Destination IP Address: The 128-bit IPv6 address of destination for which a route is
desired.

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2.

Source IP Address: The 128-bit IPv6 address of the node which originated the Route
Request.
Note, the order of the fields has been changed to enable alignment along the 128-bit
boundaries.
Route Reply (RREP) Message Format

The format of the IPv6 Route Reply message (RREP) contains the same fields with the same
functions as the RREP message defined for IP version 4, except as follows:
1. Prefix Size: The Prefix Size is 7 bits instead of 5, to account for the 128-bit IPv6 address
space.
2. Destination Sequence Number: The destination sequence number associated to the
route.
3. Destination IP Address: The 128-bit IP address of the destination for which a route is
supplied.
4. Source IP Address: The 128-bit IP address of the source node which issued the RREQ
for which the route is supplied.
Note, the order of the fields has been changed for better alignment.
Route Error Message Format
The format of the Route Error (RERR) message is identical to the format for the IPv4 RERR
message except that the IP addresses are 128 bits, not 32 bits.
Route Reply Acknowledgment (RREP-ACK) Message Format
The RREP-ACK message is used to acknowledge receipt of an RREP message. It is used in
cases where the link over which the RREP message is sent may be unreliable. It is identical
in format to the RREP-ACK message for IPv4.
AODV for IPv6 Operation
The handling of AODV for IPv6 messages analogous to the operation of AODV for IPv4,
except that the RREQ, RREP, RERR, and RREP-ACK messages described above are to be
used instead; these messages have the formats appropriate for use with 128-bit IPv6
addresses [Perkins2000].

6. Conclusion
In this chapter, we introduced the general concepts of mobile ad hoc networks (MANET),
routing in a MANET, and routing protocols for MANETs. For routing protocols, we
summarized the key concepts of some popular proactive, reactive and hybrid protocols. We
also introduced two popular MANET routing protocols for IPv6 networks, because more
and more networks will adopt IPv6 addresses in the near future.
Each protocol introduced in this chapter has its own advantage and disadvantages in
different MANET settings or environments. Therefore, it is hard to say which one is the best
among them. So far, AODV is the most popular one for both IPv4 and IPv6 networks
because it has more advantages than other protocols and it has been implemented
successfully. In fact, the ODCR or the GOR algorithm could be a better choice.

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7. References
[Abohasan2009] Abolhasan, Hagelstein and Wang, Real-world Performance of Current
Proactive Multi- hop Mesh Protocols, Proceedings of IEEE APCC2009, Shanghai,
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Protocols under On/Off Source Traffic Effect, Proceedings of NCS2006, ChiangMai, Thailand, 3/2006.
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Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks: Protocol Design

Edited by Prof. Xin Wang

ISBN 978-953-307-402-3
Hard cover, 656 pages
Publisher InTech

Published online 30, January, 2011

Published in print edition January, 2011

Being infrastructure-less and without central administration control, wireless ad-hoc networking is playing a
more and more important role in extending the coverage of traditional wireless infrastructure (cellular
networks, wireless LAN, etc). This book includes state-of-the-art techniques and solutions for wireless ad-hoc
networks. It focuses on the following topics in ad-hoc networks: quality-of-service and video communication,
routing protocol and cross-layer design. A few interesting problems about security and delay-tolerant networks
are also discussed. This book is targeted to provide network engineers and researchers with design guidelines
for large scale wireless ad hoc networks.

How to reference

In order to correctly reference this scholarly work, feel free to copy and paste the following:
Fenglien Lee (2011). Routing in Mobile Ad hoc Networks, Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks: Protocol Design, Prof. Xin
Wang (Ed.), ISBN: 978-953-307-402-3, InTech, Available from: http://www.intechopen.com/books/mobile-adhoc-networks-protocol-design/routing-in-mobile-ad-hoc-networks

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