Ad Hoc Networking in the Internet: A Deeper Problem Than It Seems

Abstract

Self-organized networks, also known as ad hoc networks or MANETs, are expected to soon become important components in the Internet architecture. Numerous efforts currently focus on the accomplishment of scalable and efficient mobile ad hoc routing, an essential piece in order to fully integrate ad hoc networks in the Internet. However, an orthogonal and yet as important issue lies with ad hoc IP autoconfiguration. Indeed, prior to participation in IP communication and routing, a node must acquire IP addresse(s) to configure its interface(s). These IP addresses may be required to be unique within a certain scope and/or topologically "correct". Since nodes may be mobile and neither the set of nodes in the MANET nor their connections to each other is pre-determined, the proper configuration must be detected and acquired automatically. This paper reviews the applicability, in the particular context of MANETs, of standard automatic address configuration and prefix allocation protocols, and identifies the different categories of issues that are not solved by these protocols. The paper then elaborates further on why these issues are more profound than they seem, as they pertain to graph theory and are in fact real scalability and architectural issues for the Internet of tomorrow