Design of Internet Connectivity for Mobile Ad hoc Networks

We present a design space analysis of the problem of providing Internet connectivity for mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). Currently there are a plethora of proposals to solve this problem in the research community. However, we argue that many of the existing designs suffer from complexity and design solutions that have not been properly evaluated. One reason for this is the lack of implementations. We believe that a design space analysis will help to clear the field and lead to better designs. We illustrate this approach by presenting a new system design for MANET Internet connectivity. We have evaluated our system in simulation and have found that not only is it more simple than common existing approaches, but also more efficient and less likely to fail in the face of routing updates. In addition, we have implemented our system in a real testbed to illustrate its ability to provide a complete mobility solution together with Mobile IP.