ROBUST AND FLEXIBLE IP ADDRESSING FOR MOBILE AD-HOC NETWORK

Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs) are expected to become more and more important in the upcoming years. In order to enable the establishment of IP services in MANets, IP address auto configuration mechanisms are required. In this paper, we review the existing solutions to interconnect MANETs, but find them lacking in robustness and flexibility. In a wired network, layer three address assignments is a task that is mostly performed by dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), an easy to manage centralized network component that can be reaching by every node of the network by simply speaking or hearing through the wired media. In mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) the wireless media infrastructure is a changing and dynamic environment where we cannot assure that every mobile node will be connected at a given time neither predict the topology or size of the network. IP address assignment is a difficult task in MANETs, in recent years several approaches have been proposed to solve this task, here we will present a review of them and discuss the main features of their solutions.