Comparing inter-domain routing protocol assessment tools for MANET

International audienceNew generation military equipment, soldiers and vehicles, use wireless technology to communicate on the battlefield. During missions, they form an ad hoc network, namely Mobile Ad hoc NETwork (MANET). Since the battlefield includes coalition, each group may communicate with another group, and inter-MANET communication may be established. Inter-MANET (or interdomain MANET) communication should allow communication, but maintain a control on the exchanged information. Several protocols have been proposed in order to handle inter-domain routing for tactical MANETs. In this paper, we review these protocols and highlight the general issues they solve. Then, we compare the behavior of a simulator (NS3), an emulator (CORE) and a real platform (using laptops) on simple network characteristics at Network and Data Link layers level. We show that there are behavioral differences among these three validation tools, and particularly those based on softwares (NS3 and CORE), which create problems that does not exist in reality. Consequently, most existing protocols are more complex than they should be. Based on this analysis and real behavior, we propose some preconization to design Inter-domain protocols for MANET