| Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks (MANETs) are dynamic and multi-hop in nature. As nodes continually join and leave the MANET, managing the problem of address conflicts is particularly challenging. In the past, researchers have gone to great lengths to ensure that nodes are assigned unique addresses and various protocols and policies have been designed to resolve address conflicts. In this paper, we argue that current solutions, originally designed for static wired networks, put unnecessary stress on the dynamic operation of a MANET. To solve this problem, we present a MANET that can continue to operate even when there are conflicting addresses. Unlike previous solutions, our technique does not break applications by requiring nodes to renumber. Further, the overheads introduced by traditional address allocation and maintenance protocols are removed. All these improvements are effected by introducing of a new routing sub-layer that enables a reactive routing protocol to route packets through a MANET that is experiencing address conflicts. This routing sub-layer provides features such as conflict avoidance forwarding, conflict notification, and enhanced address resolution. |
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Comments:
In this work we showed that by augmenting the routing
logic to be aware of unique identifiers (UIDs), we do not need address
auto-configuration protocols in MANETs. Thus, we reduce the overheads
and complexity with designing such protocols.
One observation is that current protocols use unique identifiers (UIDs) to distinguish between IP or MAC addresses, however one cannot fully guarantee the uniqueness of these UIDs. The only option is to minimize the probability of collisions. Therefore, until one can guarantee UIDs' uniqueness, the processes of ensuring uniqueness of IP addresses, detecting and resolving conflicts are a waste of effort. |