Implementation of the Dynamic Source Routing Protocol in Network Simulator 2 – An Overview

Abstract

A Mobile Ad Hoc Network (MANET) is a collection of mobile wireless nodes that can utilize multi-hop radio relaying and are capable of operating without necessarily using any pre-existing infrastructure. In MANETs, one of the key issues is how to route packets efficiently. Many routing protocols for such networks have been proposed. Amongst the most popular ones are Dynamic Source Routing (DSR), Ad Hoc On-demand Distance Vector (AODV) and Optimized Link State Routing (OLSR), which has the status of IETF Experimental RFCs. This paper presents an overview of the implementation of the DSR protocol in Network Simulator 2 (NS-2). A number of simulation-based experiments are presented to raise confidence in the model behavior and assumptions. The work can act as a primer for NS-2 beginners to use NS-2 for communication network performance evaluation based on simulation.