TCS802 MOBILE COMPUTING

UNIT V - ROUTING PROTOCOLS

Ad Hoc networks, localization, MAC issues, Routing protocols, global state routing (GSR), Destination
sequenced distance vector routing (DSDV), Dynamic source routing (DSR), Ad Hoc on demand distance
vector routing (AODV), Temporary ordered routing algorithm (TORA), QoS in Ad Hoc Networks, application.

NETWORK PROTOCOLS

INTRODUCTION
Since the ad hoc wireless network consists of a set of mobile nodes (hosts) that are connected by wireless
links, the network topology in such a network may keep changing randomly. Hence a variety of routing
protocols for ad hoc wireless networks has been proposed.

ISSUES IN DESIGNING A ROUTING PROTOCOL FOR AD HOC WIRELESS NETWORKS

The major challenges that a routing protocol designed for ad hoc wireless networks faces are:

Mobility

suffers frequent path breaks.

nnot be used in adhoc wireless networks because the nodes

are here are not stationary and the convergence is very slow in wired networks.

ust be able to perform efficient and effective

mobility management.
Bandwidth Constraint

the exploitation of wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) technologies.

less than what a wired network can offer.

low as possible.

the topological information.

Error-prone shared broadcast radio channel
hoc wireless
networks.

-varying characteristics in terms of link capacity and link-error

probability.

find alternate routes through better-quality links.

congestion.
Hidden and exposed terminal problems

simultaneous transmission of those nodes that are not within the direct transmission range of the
receiver, but are within the transmission range of the receiver.

transmission of each other.

Ex: consider figure 3.1. Here, if both node A and node C transmit to node B at the same time, their
packets collide at node B. This is due to the fact that both node A and C are hidden from each other, as
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they are not within the direct transmission range of each other and hence do not know about the
presence of each other.

FIG: 3.1 Hidden Terminal Problems

problem include medium access collision avoidance (MACA):

Transmitting node first explicitly notifies all potential hidden nodes about the forthcoming
transmission by means of a two way handshake control protocol called RTS-CTS protocol exchange.
❖ This may not solve the problem completely but it reduces the probability of collisions.

❖ An improved version of MACA protocol.

❖ Introduced to increase the efficiency.

❖ Requires that a receiver acknowledges each successful reception of data packet.

Figure: 3.2 Hidden Terminal problem with RTS-CTS Figure: 3.3 Exposed
Terminal Problem

-way exchange mechanism, RTS-CTS-Data-ACK, as illustrated in figure

Other solutions include floor acquisition multiple access (FAMA) and Dual busy tone multiple access
(DBTMA).

nearby transmitting node to transmit to another node.

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the figure 3.3. Here, if a transmission from node B to another node A is already in progress,
node C cannot transmit to node D, as it concludes that its neighbor node B, is in transmitting mode and
hence should not interfere with the on-going transmission. Thus, reusability of the radio spectrum is
affected.

Resource Constraints

constraints along with the restrictions on the power source.

Characteristics of an Ideal Routing Protocol for ad hoc wireless networks

A routing protocol for ad hoc wireless networks should have the following characteristics:

scalable.
es.

network must have quick access to routes, that is, minimum connection setup time is desired.
state propagation control overhead.
-free and free from state routes.

by each node. The transmissions should be reliable to reduce message loss and to prevent the
occurrence of state routes.

be quick.

power.

Changes in remote parts of the network must not cause updates in the topology information maintained
by the node.
ertain level of quality of service (QoS) as demanded by the applications,
and should also offer support for time-sensitive traffic.

CLASSIFICATIONS OF ROUTING PROTOCOLS

A classification tree is shown below:

The routing protocol for adhoc wireless networks can be broadly classified into 4 categories
based on
❖ Routing information update mechanism
❖ Use of temporal information for routing
❖ Routing topology
❖ Utilization of specific resources

Based on the routing information update mechanism

Ad hoc wireless network routing protocols can be classified into 3 major categories based on the
routing information update mechanism. They are:
Proactive or table-driven routing protocols:
❖ Every node maintains the network topology information in the form of routing tables by
periodically exchanging routing information.
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❖ Routing information is generally flooded in the whole network.

❖ Whenever a node requires a path to a destination, it runs an appropriate path-finding
algorithm on the topology information it maintains.
Reactive or on-demand routing protocols:
❖ Do not maintain the network topology information.
❖ Obtain the necessary path when it is required, by using a connection establishment
process.
Hybrid routing protocols:
❖ Combine the best features of the above two categories.
❖ Nodes within a certain distance from the node concerned, or within a particular
geographical region, are said to be within the routing zone of the given node.
❖ For routing within this zone, a table-driven approach is used.
❖ For nodes that are located beyond this zone, an on-demand approach is used.

Based on the use of temporal information for routing

The protocols that fall under this category can be further classified into two types:
Routing protocols using past temporal information:
Use information about the past status of the links or the status of links at the time of routing to
make routing decisions.
Routing protocols that use future temporal information:
Use information about the about the expected future status of the wireless links to make
approximate routing decisions.
Apart from the lifetime of wireless links, the future status information also includes information
regarding the lifetime of the node, prediction of location, and prediction of link availability.

Based on the routing topology

Ad hoc wireless networks, due to their relatively smaller number of nodes, can make use of either a flat
topology or a hierarchical topology for routing.
Flat topology routing protocols:
Make use of a flat addressing scheme similar to the one used in IEEE 802.3 LANs.
It assumes the presence of a globally unique addressing mechanism for nodes in an ad hoc
wireless network.
Hierarchical topology routing protocols:
Make use of a logical hierarchy in the network and an associated addressing scheme.
The hierarchy could be based on geographical information or it could be based on hop distance.

Based on the utilization of specific resources

Power-aware routing:
Aims at minimizing the consumption of a very important resource in the ad hoc wireless networks
such as battery power
The routing decisions are based on minimizing the power consumption either logically or globally
in the network.
Geographical information assisted routing:
Improves the performance of routing and reduces the control overhead by effectively utilizing the
geographical information available.

TABLE-DRIVEN ROUTING PROTOCOLS

are updated frequently in order to maintain consistent and accurate network state information
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source-tree adaptive routing protocol (STAR) and cluster-head gateway switch routing protocol (CGSR).

Destination sequenced distance-vector routing protocol (DSDV)

-Ford algorithm where each node maintains a table

that contains the shortest distance and the first node on the shortest path to every other node in the
network.

count-to-infinity problem, and for faster convergence.

-driven routing protocol, routes to all destinations are readily available at every node at all
times.
-to-date view of the
network topology.

Incremental updates: Takes a single network data packet unit (NDPU). These are used when
a node does not observe significant changes in the local topology.
Full dumps: Takes multiple NDPUs. It is done either when the local topology changes
significantly or when an incremental update requires more than a single NDPU.

the previous one.

Consider the example as shown in figure 3.4(a). Here node 1 is the source node and node 15 is the
destination. As all the nodes maintain global topology information, the route is already available as shown
in figure 3.4 (b). Here the routing table node 1 indicates that the shortest route to the destination node is
available through node 5 and the distance to it is 4 hops, as depicted in figure 3.4(b)
-going data transfer session is handled by the protocol in
the following way.
h the broken link’s weight assigned
to infinity (∞) and with a sequence number greater than the stored sequence number for that
destination.

propagate the broken-link information to the whole network.

sequence number generated by the destination.

3.5 shows the case when node 11 moves from its current position.

Advantages
✓ Less delay involved in the route setup process.
✓ Mechanism of incremental update with sequence number tags makes the existing wired network
protocols adaptable to ad hoc wireless networks.
✓ The updates are propagated throughout the network in order to maintain an up-to-date view of
the network topology at all nodes.

Disadvantages
➢ The updates due to broken links lead to a heavy control overhead during high mobility.
➢ Even a small network with high mobility or a large network with low mobility can completely
choke the available bandwidth.
➢ It suffers from excessive control overhead.
➢ In order to obtain information about a particular destination node, a node has to wait for a table
update message initiated by the same destination node.
➢ This delay could result in state routing information at nodes.
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Figure: 3.4 Route establishment in DSDV

Figure: 3.5 Route maintenance in DSDV

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Wireless Routing Protocol (WRP)

bellman-ford algorithm.
-to-infinity problem and to enable faster convergence, it employs a unique method
of maintaining information regarding the shortest distance to every destination node in the network and
penultimate hop node on the path to every destination node.
-to-date view of the network, every node has a readily available route to every
destination node in the network.

ns only one topology table, WRP uses a set of tables to maintain more accurate
information.

➢ Distance table (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 the neighbor for
a particular destination.
➢ Routing table (RT): contains the up-to-date view of the network for all known destinations. It keeps
the shortest distance, the predecessor/penultimate node, the successor node, and a flag indicating
the status of the path. The path status may be a simplest (correct) path or a loop (error), or
destination node not marked (null).
➢ Link cost table (LCT): contains the cost of relaying messages through each link. The cost of broken
link is ∞.it also contains the number of update periods passed since the last successful update was
received from that link.
➢ Message retransmission list (MRL): contains an entry for every update message that is to be
retransmitted and maintains a counter for each entry.

also checks the other neighbors’ distance, hence convergence is much faster than DSDV.
in figure below, where the source of the route is node 1 and destination is
node 15. As WRP proactively maintains the route to all destinations, the route to any destination node is
readily available at the source node.
oute from node 1 to node 15 has the next node as node 2. The
predecessor node of 15 corresponding to this route is route 12. The predecessor information helps WRP
to converge quickly during link breaks.
message to its neighbors with the link cost of the
broken link set to ∞. After receiving the update message; all affected nodes update their minimum
distances to the corresponding nodes. The node that initiated the update message then finds an alternative
route, if available from its DT. Figure 3.6 shows route maintenance in WRP.

Advantages
✓ WRP has the same advantages as that of DSDV.
✓ 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 adhoc wireless network.
➢ It is not suitable for highly dynamic and also for very large ad hoc wireless networks.
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Figure: 3.6 Route establishments in WRP

Figure: 3.7 Route maintenance in WRP

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ON-DEMAND ROUTING PROTOCOLS

They execute the path-finding process and exchange routing information only when a path is
required by a node to communicate with a destination

Dynamic Source Routing Protocol (DSR)

the bandwidth consumed by control packets in adhoc wireless networks by

eliminating the periodic table update messages
-less and does not require periodic hello packet transmissions
st packets in the network

traversed
before forwarding it

transmissions
t packet during the route construction
phase

In figure 3.8, source node 1 initiates a RouteRequest packet to obtain a path for destination node 15

contained in a data packet

-backing of a data packet on the RouteRequest

RouteReply packets,
then a source node may receive multiple replies from intermediate nodes

In fig 3.9, if the intermediate node 10 has a route to the destination via node 14, it also sends the
RouteReply to the source node
test and best route and uses that for sending data packets

Advantages
✓ Uses a reactive approach which eliminates the need to periodically flood the network with table
update messages
✓ Route is established only when required
✓ Reduce control overhead

Disadvantages
➢ Route maintenance mechanism does not locally repair a broken link
➢ Stale route cache information could result in inconsistencies during route construction phase
➢ Connection set up delay is higher
➢ Performance degrades rapidly with increasing mobility
➢ Routing overhead is more & directly proportional to path length
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Figure: 3.7 Route establishment in DSR

Figure: 3.7 Route maintenance in DSR

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Ad Hoc On-Demand Distance Vector Routing Protocol (AODV)

th

packet transmission
-to-date path to the destination
identifier, the source sequence number, the
destination sequence number, the broadcast identifier and the time to live field

, it either forwards it or prepares a RouteReply if it

has a valid route to the destination

discarded
it’s BcastID

ed
-establishes the route to the destination if required

Figure: 3.10 Route establishment in AODV Figure: 3.11 Route maintenance in AODV
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Advantage

✓ Routes are established on demand and DestSeqNum are used to find latest route to the
destination
✓ Connection setup delay is less

Disadvantages
➢ Intermediate nodes can lead to inconsistent routes if the source sequence number is very old
➢ Multiple RouteReply packets to single RouteRequest packet can lead to heavy control overhead
➢ Periodic beaconing leads to unnecessary bandwidth consumption

Temporally Ordered Routing Algorithm (TORA)

-initiated on-demand routing protocol

one-loop local topology information

initiated by a path break

nd erasing routes

does not have any directed link

-oriented directed acyclic graph using a query/update mechanism
nce the path to the destination is obtained, it is considered to exist as long as the path is available,
irrespective of the path length changes due to the re-configurations that may take place during the
course of data transfer session
s a partition; it originated a clear message, which erases the existing path information
in that partition related to the destination

Advantages
✓ Incur less control overhead
✓ Concurrent detection of partitions
✓ Subsequent deletion of routes
Disadvantages
➢ Temporary oscillations and transient loops
➢ Local reconfiguration of paths result in non-optimal routes

Figure: 3.12. Illustration of temporal ordering in TORA

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Figure: 3.13 Route maintenance in TORA

Unicast routing algorithms

An internet is a combination of networks connected by routers. When a datagram goes from a source to
a destination, it will probably pass through many routers until it reaches the router attached to the
destination network.

INTER- AND INTRA-DOMAIN ROUTING

An internet can be so large that one routing protocol cannot handle the task of updating the routing tables
of all routers. For this reason, an internet is divided into autonomous systems. An autonomous system (AS)
is a group of networks and routers under the authority of a single administration. Routing inside an
autonomous system is called intra-domain routing. Routing between autonomous systems is called inter-
domain routing.
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Popular routing protocols

DISTANCE VECTOR ROUTING

Distance vector and link state routing are both interior routing protocols. They can be used inside an
autonomous system. Both of these routing protocols become intractable when the domain of operation
becomes large. Distance vector routing is subject to instability if there is more than a few hops in the
domain of operation. Link state routing needs a huge amount of resources to calculate routing tables. It
also creates heavy traffic because of flooding. There is a need for a third routing protocol which we call
path vector routing.
-Ford Algorithm

A graph for Bellman-Ford algorithm

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Updating Routing Table

• If the next-node entry is different
– The receiving node chooses the row with the smaller cost
– If there is a tie, the old one is kept
• If the next-node entry is the same
– i.e. the sender of the new row is the provider of the old entry
– The receiving node chooses the new row, even though the new value is infinity.
• Periodic Update
– A node sends its routing table, normally 30 seconds, in a periodic update
• Triggered Update
– A node sends its routing table to its neighbors any time when there is a change in its
routing table
• After updating its routing table, or
• Detects some failure in the neighboring links

Two-Node Instability
• Defining Infinity
– Most implementations define 16 as infinity
• Split Horizon
– Instead of flooding the table through each interface, each node sends only part of its
table through each interface
– E.g. node B thinks that the optimum routes to reach X is via A, it does not need to
advertise this piece of information to A

• Split Horizon and Poison Reverse

– One drawback of Split Horizon
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• Normally, the DV protocol uses a timer and if there is no news about a route, the node deletes
the route from its table
• In the previous e.g., node A cannot guess that this is due to split horizon or because B has not
received any news about X recently
– Poison Reverse
• Node B can still advertise the value for X, but is the source of information is A, it can replace
the distance with infinity as a warning

RIP

The Routing Information Protocol (RIP) is an intra-domain (interior) routing protocol used inside
anautonomous system. It is a very simple protocol based on distance vector routing. RIP implements
distance vector routing directly with some considerations.

RIP messages
• Request
– A request message is sent by a router that has just come up or by a router that has
sometime-out entries
– A request can ask about specific entries or all entries
• Response
– A response can be either solicited or unsolicited (30s or when there is a change in the
routing table)
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RIP message format

Request messages

RIP Timers
• Periodic timer
– It controls the advertising of regular update message (25 ~ 30 sec)
• Expiration timer
– It governs the validity of a route (180 sec)
– The route is considered expired and the hop count of the route is set to 16
• Garbage collection timer
–A invalid route is not purged from the routing table until this timer expires (120 sec)
RIPv2 vs. RIPv1
• Classless Addressing
• Authentication
• Multicasting
– RIPv1 uses broadcasting to send RIP messages to every neighbors. Routers as well as
hosts receive the packets
– RIPv2 uses the all-router multicast address to send the RIP messages only to RIP
routers in the network
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Multicast routing algorithms

A multicast address is a destination address for a group of hosts that have joined a multicast group. A
packet that uses a multicast address as a destination can reach all members of the group unless there is
some filtering restriction by the receiver.

Multicasting

• In multicast routing, the router may forward the received packet through several of its interfaces.
• Broadcasting is a special case of multicasting
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Multicasting vs. Multiple Unicasting

• Emulation of multicasting through multiple unicasting is not efficient and may create long delays,
particularly with a large group

Multicasting Applications
• Access to distributed databases
• Information dissemination
• Dissemination of news
• Teleconferencing
• Distance learning
Multicast tree
• Objectives of multicasting:
• Every member of the group should receive one, and only one, copy of the multicast packet.
Nonmember must not receive a copy
• There must be no loops in routing
• The path traveled from source to each destination must be optimal
• In a source-based tree approach, the combination of source and group determines the tree
(DVMRP, MOSPF, PIM-DM)
• In the group-shared tree approach, the group determines the tree (CBT, PIM-SM)
Multicast Routing
• Optimal routing: Shortest path trees
• Unicast Routing
– Each router in the domain has a table that defines a shortest path tree to possible
destinations
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Shortest Path Tree

• Multicast Routing
– Each involved router needs to construct a shortest path tree for each group
• Source-Based Tree and Group-Shared Tree
• In the source-based tree approach, each router needs to have one shortest path tree for each
group

• In the group-shared tree approach, only the core router, which has a shortest path tree for
each group, is involved in multicasting
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MULTICASTING PROTOCOLS:

Multicast Link State Routing: MOSPF

• Multicast link state routing uses the source-based tree approach
• n (the number of group) topologies and n shortest path trees made
• Each router has a routing table that represents as many shortest path trees as there are groups
• MOSPF is an extension of the OSPF protocol that uses multicast link state routing to create
source based trees
• MOSPF requires a new link state update packet to associate the unicast address of a host with
the group address or addresses the host is sponsoring
• MOSPF is a data-driven protocol; the first time an MOSPF router see a datagram with a given
source and group address, the router constructs the Dijkstra shortest path tree

Multicast Distance Vector: DVMRP

• Multicast distance vector routing uses the source-based trees, but the router never actually
makes a routing table
• Multicast routing does not allow a router to send its routing table to its neighbors. The idea is
to create a table from scratch by using the information from the unicast distance vector tables
• Process based on four decision-making strategies. Each strategy is built on its predecessor
– Flooding
– Reverse Path Forwarding (RPF)
– Reverse Path Broadcasting (RPB)
– Reverse Path Multicasting (RPM)
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DVMRP: Strategies
• Flooding broadcasts packets, but creates loops in the systems
• Reverse path forwarding: RPF eliminates the loop in the flooding process
• Reverse path broadcasting: RPB creates a shortest path broadcast tree from the source to each
destination. It guarantees that each destination receives one and only one copy of the packet
• Problem with RPF

Part A Questions

1. What is hidden terminal problem?

2. What are the responsibilities of routing protocol?
3. What are the major challenges in designing routing protocols?
4. Differentiate proactive and reactive protocols. Write examples for each.
5. List the characteristics of a routing protocol for ad hoc wireless networks.
6. List the major classification of routing protocol for ad hoc wireless network.
7. Based on routing information update mechanism how the routing protocols are classified?
8. How does energy aware routing work?
9. List the classification of routing protocols based on the routing information update mechanism.
10. List the advantages and disadvantages of DSDV routing protocols.
11. What is hybrid routing protocol?
12. List some examples of table driven routing protocols.
13. List the types of on-demand routing protocols
14. What do you mean by time to live (TTL)?
15. What are the advantages and disadvantages of dynamic source routing protocol?
16. Give the difference between Ad hoc on demand Distance vector routing protocol (AODV) and
dynamic sequence routing protocol (DSR)

Part B Questions

1. Explain on demand routing protocol in detail.

2. Explain the major challenges that a routing protocol designed for adhoc wireless networks face.
3. List the characteristics of ideal routing protocol for ad hoc wireless network.
4. Discuss table driven protocols with examples.
5. Explain multicast routing algorithms in detail.
6. Explain the scheduling table update mechanism in distributed priority scheduling.