Conflict Detection in MANET Autoconf

Several wireless ad-hoc routing protocols have been and are being developped for MANET. However, autoconfiguration of MANET networks is still an unsettled area, and several methods have been proposed to perform such a task. One of the mecanisms that may be required for address autoconfiguration, is the detection of address conflicts. This is specially true for one of scenarios for MANET autoconf, the This document specifies a general protocol for the detecting address conflicts in a MANET network, and hence addresses a subset of the requirements of a full MANET address autoconfiguration solution. It is specified as an independent protocol from the MANET routing protocol, and the address configuration method, and may be used with any of them. It aims at conceptual simplicity: essentially, a tree of the nodes is built, from which all the information from all the existing nodes is known. Conflicts are detected by the node at root of the tree, or as inconsistent information on the root of the tree.