Article Details

Mobile Ad Hoc Networks Are Not a Fundamentally Defective Architecture |

Malika Bhiyana, in International Journal of Information Technology and Management | IT & Management

ABSTRACT:

Millionsof people nowadays have portable computers and they generally want to readtheir e-mail and access their normal file systems wherever in the world theymay be. This demand for mobility has fueled the rapid progression of computer& communication technologies from networks consisting of both stationaryhosts & routers, to networks consisting of mobile hosts and stationaryrouters, and more recently to the other extreme case of networks having bothmobile hosts and mobile routers. This last case of infrastructure-less networksof mobile hosts and mobile routers are called ad hoc networks or MANETs (MobileAd Hoc NETworks). It has been claimed that MANETs are a fundamentally flawedarchitecture. This is because Mobile Ad Hoc networks are almost never used inpractice and almost every wireless network nodes communicate to base-stationsand access points, instead of co-operating to forward packets hopby-hop. Inthis paper, we take the position that MANETs annot be declared a fundamentallyflawed architecture. The reasoning behind this position is that MANETs arestill an emerging technology that has received intensive attention onlyrecently. All aspects of the MANET concept are yet to be identified and fullyunderstood. Research on MANETs is still in its early stages and considerableresearch effort is still necessary.