Address Auto-configuration in MANETs

Sonali Singh Assistant Professor Dept. of Computer Science, Kanya Gurukul Mahavidyalya, Dehradun. Email : sonalisagi@yahoo.com Dr. (Mrs.) Nipur Associate Professor Dept. of Computer Science, Kanya Gurukul Mahavidyalya, Dehradun. Email : nipursingh@hotmail.com

Abstract 2. Need of Auto-configuration

A mobile ad hoc network (MANET) consists of a set of a mobile nodes that communicate via single or multi hop wireless links and function without any predefined infrastructure. A node can join or leave the MANET at its own will. Addressing is an important issue as it provides the means to start communication among nodes in MANET. Addressing approaches focus on dynamic autoconfiguration of addresses to ad hoc nodes. This paper aims at providing survey on some proposed address autoconfiguration solutions A MANET is an independent self organizing network in which each node functions as both an end host and a router. MANETs are characterized by: limited bandwidth, shared transmission channel and lack of central processing unit of administration and configuration. Significant research works have been carried out to improve quality of services and to handle network limitations, including such as limited power, mobility and transmission range. Any solution for these problem assumes that IP address of mobile nodes have been already configured before joining the network. The topology of a mobile ad-hoc network is typically highly dynamic because its nodes are free to move independently and randomly. Hence address autoconfiguration is a desired feature for mobile ad hoc network. An auto configuration protocol is required to enable dynamic assignment of network addresses in nodes. Pre configuration of addresses is not a possibility since ad hoc networks have an ever-changing environment [Weni 04]. Also, there is no central access point or entity assigning the addresses. Therefore address allocation protocols are required where each node in the MANET is capable of assigning a unique address.

1. Introduction
Wireless mobile networks are composed of mobile nodes interconnected by wireless multi-hop communication paths. Unlike conventional wireless networks, ad hoc network have infrastructure less communication over the shared wireless channel. Communication is directly between nodes or through intermediate nodes acting as router. The main advantage of such a network is rapid deployment. MANET can be established extremely flexibly without any fixed base station in battle field, military applications and other emergency and disaster situation. In such conditions, where the wired network is not available, ad hoc network provide the only feasible means for communication and information access. Ad hoc network are suited for use in situations where an infrastructure is unavailable or to deploy one is not cost effective. MANET can be used in establishing efficient, dynamic communication for rescue, emergency and military operations. The major issues in MANET are routing, multicasting/broadcasting, address auto-configuration, transport layer management, power management, security, Quality of service, products [Kuma 06].

3. Issues in Auto-configuration
Any address auto-configuration mechanism should address the following issues: Dynamic nature of nodes: Adhoc nodes are mobile and could join and leave the network at any moment without notification. Network Partitioning: A mobile network can split into two or more network, if one or more nodes decide to leave the network. In such a case, dynamics of the network can change. These network partitions may or may not merge back together. Network merging: Two or more independent MANETs may be merged into one big network.

Because the MANETs are separately configured, so there could be some duplicate address in them. Therefore some or all nodes in one partition may need to change their address.

4. Classification of address auto-configuration approaches

Address configuration is an essential phase before network nodes could communicate. Routing protocols in MANET assume a priori that mobile nodes are configured with a valid (conflict free) IP address. Using traditional IP address assignment, such as DHCP [Drom 97] and SAA [Thom 98], is not possible due to instability of mobile nodes and lack of central administration. Addressing thus becomes significant in adhoc wireless networks due to the absence of any centralized coordinator. Address autoconfiguration protocols for MANETs are broadly classified in three approaches: (1) Stateful or Conflict free allocation: Stateful approaches makes use of an address allocation table. In this approach a central entity or some distributed entities assign addresses to new node. (2) Stateless or Conflict-detection allocation: In contrast, stateless approaches are less complex, they employ network wide Duplicate Address Detection (DAD) to ensure uniqueness of addresses[Perk 00]. They do not use allocation tables. (3) Hybrid Approaches : Hybrid approaches tend to combine mechanisms from both stateful and stateless approach. The classification is shown in the figure:

Addressing Protocols in MANETs

Stateful Approaches

Stateless Approaches

Hybrid Approaches

Figure 1. Classification of Addressing Algorithms for MANETs

5. Addressing algorithms for MANETs 5.1 Stateful Approaches

In Stateful schemes, the IP address is assigned by either one node or a set of nodes belonging to the network, thus the network has to maintain state information about already used and/or free addresses.

MANETconf[Nesa 02] When a new node wishes to join the network, it broadcast a message to its neighborhood. Then it chooses the first neighbor who replies as the initiator and send an address request query to it. The initiator then chooses a free IP address from its allocation table and floods the network with an initiator request message. If all the existing nodes reply positively, it concludes that the address is free and assign it to the requester and flood this information in the MANET so that all other nodes can also update their table. If at least one response is negative, another address is selected and another attempt is initiated to assign address to the requester. MANETconf also addresses network partitioning and merging. Each network is assigned a partition ID. This ID is periodically flooded within the network and the node which doesnt receive it for sometime assumes that the network is partitioned. Similarly, when a node sees another node with the different partition ID, it assumes a network merger. Though MANETconf guarantees address uniqueness and is totally distributed but this protocol is highly complex in term of communication, table maintenance and synchronization. Buddy Protocol[Mohs 02] This scheme uses the concept of binary split. At the beginning there is only one node that has the entire pool of addresses, this node detects no neighbors, thus it auto configure with the first IP of the predefined address range. When a new node joins and requests an address, the initiator assigns an address and also divide the set of IP addresses into two and give one half to the requesting node. This process continues and eventually, all the nodes in the network have a set of addresses to assign. The synchronization of the address table involves each node to periodically broadcast its address table. The detection of IP address leaks is accomplished by buddy nodes. If one node detects that the other is missing, it merges its IP range with its own pool. To distinguish between different networks, a network is associated always with a network ID. When networks merge, one of the conflicting nodes has to give up its address space and acquire a new set of addresses. This protocol guarantees address uniqueness , generates no unnecessary address changes and distributed but it is complex to be implemented and consistent flooding increases network overhead.

5.2 Stateless Approaches

In stateless schemes, the IP address is assigned by the node itself which has to perform a uniqueness test to find out whether there is a duplication conflict. WDAD[Vaid 02] The goal of weak duplicate address detection (WDAD) protocol is to prevent a packet from being delivered to a wrong destination node, even if two node in the network happen to chosen the same IP address. The assumption is that the two nodes are in different partitions initially, and subsequently when they merge, WDAD is implemented to detect conflicting addresses. Each node generates a unique key and then embeds the key into an IP address to make the IP address unique. When a node receives a routing message with an IP address that exists in its table, it checks if the keys are different. If they are different, a duplicate address is detected and the entry is marked as invalid and additional steps should be taken to in form other nodes about this duplication. The authors do agree that their protocol would fail if two nodes choose the same address and key or MAC address. For the overhead, WDAD requires no additional traffic for the autoconfiguration mechanism, but the price is traffic overhead caused by the integration of the key value in routing packets. T-DAD[Lee 06] The scheme Tunneled DAD (T- DAD) describe global IPv6 address auto-configuration mechanism for MANET nodes connected to the Internet via one or more gateways. Because of the multihop problem or DAD time bound IPv6 DAD process cannot be applicable for MANET without modification . This mechanism propose a stateless autoconfiguration that overcomes multihop problem. An ad hoc node without a global address cannot send a packet through multihop, so it selects a neighboring node that has a global address and sends a Neighbor Solicitation to the selected node. The selected neighbor node establishes a tunnel between it self and the Internet Gateway in order to perform T-DAD on behalf of the previous node. The Internet Gateway has a MANET DAD table which includes address information of all nodes in MANET. After receiving a tunneled Neighbor Solicitaion from an ad hoc node, Internet Gateway scans its MANET DAD table to check whether the target address is unique or not. T-DAD is more useful than other solutions using broadcasting since every node can estimate the time bound according to the hop count. It is also flexible to be integrated with many different routing protocols. T-DAD requires the existence of a centralized server and the new nodes need selected neighbors for autoconfiguration ., so there may be some security issues

and this protocol may need some more processing time.

5.3 Hybrid Approaches

To make addressing protocols more robust, Hybrid schemes combine elements of both stateful and stateless approaches. Hybrid Centralized Query-based Autoconfiguration(HCQA)[Sun 03] This addressing mechanism utilizes SDAD[Perk 01] mechanism along with a centrally maintained allocation table in order to improve consistency. There are two goals of this addressing scheme. First, the IP address for a node must be stable and second, when the node leaves the network permanently, its address should be reusable. In HCQA, the node selects an address by itself and then verifies its uniqueness by performing SDAD in the network. If the address autoconfiguration was successful, the new node self assigns that address and registers it with an Primary Address Authority (PAA), which maintains an allocation table. As an optimization, there is also a Backup Address Authority (BAA), who takes over if the primary authority leaves the network. Both agents must constantly synchronize their allocation tables. The PAA chooses a unique network identifier and broadcasts it periodically to identify the network. When two networks merge, the address agents of both networks start receiving each others advertisements, and once the merger is detected, the two agents exchange allocation tables to detect duplicate addressing. If a node does not hear any PAA advertisement for a certain period of time, it considers that there is network partitioning and becomes the new PAA and generates a new network identifier. The technique is a very efficient approach to address configuration and at the same time it proposes an effective mechanism for detecting and handling network portioning and merging. But again. The overhead generated by DAD and the periodic floods of the PAA is very high. Passive Autoconfiguration for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks(PACMAN)[Weni 05] PACMAN is a novel approach for the distributed address autoconfiguration of mobile ad hoc networks. It is a combination of passive DAD [Weni 03] and distributed allocation table. It generates almost no protocol overhead, since it uses information from on going routing protocol traffic. Thus the nodes do not send any control packets, they just analyze the incoming packets to

know about duplicate addressing. Each node maintains an allocation table used for assigning addresses. PACMAN uses multi-layer information from the routing protocol traffic and has modular architecture. After networks merge, address conflicts are detected by PDAD. PACMAN can efficiently configure entire network within seconds, even if all nodes star up simultaneously. It can lower the routing protocol overhead significantly by using IP address encoding. PACMAN uses multi-layer information from the routing protocol traffic and has modular architecture. PACMAN is a complex protocol, which supports selective protocols like OLSR and FSR. The technique also demands modification in AODV.

References
[Thom 98]: S. Thomson and T. Nortan, IPV6 stateless Address Autoconfiguration , Network workin group, RFC 2462, December 1998. [Weni 04]: K.Weniger and M.Zitterbart, Address autoconfiguration in mobile ad hoc networks: current approaches, IEEE Netw. Mag., vol.18, no.4, pp. 6-11, July 2004. [Drom 97]: R. Droms, Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, network working group, IETF RFC 2131, March 1997. [Perk 00]: C. Perkins, J. Malinen, R. Wakikawa, E. Belding-Royer, and Y. Sun, IP Address Autoconfiguration For Ad Hoc Networks,in draft-ietfmanet-autoconf-01.txt, Internet draft: Internet Engineering Task Force, MANET working Group, 2000. [Nesa 02]: S. Nesargi and R. Prakash, MANETconf: Configuration of hosts in a mobile ad hoc network,Proc. IEEE INFOCOM, New York, NY, June 2002. [Mohs 02]: M. Mohsin and R. Prakash, IP address assignment in a mobile ad hoc network, Proc. IEEE MILCOM, Anaheim, CA, Oct. 2002. [Vaid 02]: N. H. Vaidya, Weak duplicate address detection in mobile ad hoc networks, Proc. ACM MobiHoc, Lausanne, Switzerland, pp.206216, June 2002. [Sun 03]: Y.Sun and E.M. Belding Royer, Dynamic address configuration in mobile ad hoc networks, UCSB tech. rep., Santa Barbara, CA, June 2003. [Perk 01]: C. Perkins, J. T. Malinen, R. Wakikawa, E. M. Belding-Royer, and Y. Sun, IP address auto-configuration for ad hoc networks, IETF Draft, 2001. [Weni 05]: K.Weniger, PACMAN: Passive autoconfiguration for mobile ad hoc networks, IEEE JSAC, vol.23, no.3, pp.507-509, Mar. 2005. [Weni 03]: K. Weniger, Passive duplicate address detection in mobile ad hoc networks, Proc. IEEE WCNC, New Orleans, LA, Mar. 2003. [Lee 06]: Dongkeun Lee, Jaepil Yoo, Keecheon Kim, and Kyunglim Kang, IPv6 Stateless Address Autoconfiguration in Mobile Ad Hoc Network,APWeb Workshops 2006, LNCS 3842, pp. 360-367, 2006.

6. Conclusion
Automatic address allocation is more difficult in a MANET environment than that in hard wired networks due to instability of mobile nodes, low bandwidth of wireless links, openness of MANET, and lack of centralized administration In this paper we summarized some mechanism related to the address auto-configuration and classified the approaches into three main categories, stateful, stateless, and hybrid. We also discussed the issues of host joining and departing a MANET, also MANET merger and partition. Other than the above, there are some more issues like security, scalability, power limitations etc which must be taken into account.