A Strategy for Traffic Load Balancing in Hybrid Ad Hoc Networks with Mobile Gateways

Abstract. Ad hoc networks were initially conceived as stand-alone entities without connection to any external infrastructure. A possible solution to give access to ad hoc terminals to the Internet trough conventional WLAN networks is described in the mobile multi-gateway support. This scheme proposes to util-ize a mobile node within the transmission range of the WLAN access point (AP) as a connecting gateway between the MANET and the Internet. As the gateway can move freely, its functionality can be switched to another node pre-sent in the cover area of the access point acting as a router. In any case, all the traffic flowing from/to Internet passes through the same node, which can im-pose a bottleneck in the system. In this paper, a light modification is suggested to distribute the Internet traffic among different gateways