Abstract
An ad-hoc network is the cooperative engagement of
a collection of Mobile Hosts without the required intervention
of any centralized Access Point. In this paper
we present an innovative design for the operation of such
ad-hoc networks. The basic idea of the design is to operate
each Mobile Host as a specialized router, which
periodically advertises its view of the interconnection
topology with other Mobile Hosts within the network.
This amounts to a new sort of routing protocol. We
have investigated modifications to the basic Bellman-
Ford routing mechanisms, as specified by RIP [5], to
make it suitable for a dynamic and self-starting network
mechanism as is required by users wishing to utilize adhoc
networks. Our modifications address some of the
previous objections to the use of Bellman-Ford, related
to the poor looping properties of such algorithms in the
face of broken links and the resulting time dependent
nature of the interconnection topology describing the
links between the Mobile Hosts. Finally, we describe
the ways in which the basic network-layer routing can
be modified to provide MAC-layer support for ad-hoc
networks.