[1093-1097]

In hostile environments, the adversary can launch traffic analysis against intercept able routing information embedded in routing messages and data packets. The adversaries on tracing network routes and inferring the mobility pattern of nodes during the routing of packets may pose a serious threat to covert operations. Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) use anonymous routing protocols that hide node identities and/or routes from outside observers in order to provide anonymity protection. The anonymous routing protocols can be applied to different network models with different mobility patterns. By means of route anonymity, adversaries cannot trace a packet flow back to its source or destination, either on the route or out of the route and no node has information about the real identities and locations of intermediate nodes in route. The various anonymous routing protocols are reviewed and performance of such protocols can be compared and evaluated using ns2 simulations of a well-known routing protocol to achieve better route anonymity