Performance analysis of multi-homed hybrid ad hoc network

Mobile Ad Hoc Networks consist of a number of self organized mobile nodes with routing capabilities that are commonly known as hybrid ad hoc networks when connected to a fixed network. When more than one gateway join a MANET to a fixed network, packets belonging to the same ongoing connection may pass from one network to the other using different gateways. This is typically the case of mobile nodes when they lose their routes versus a given gateway and then find new ones that pass throughout a different gateway to reach their destinations. This phenomenon may cause performance problems whose extent depends on the type of connection, the mobile node address management and routing protocols used in both fixed and mobile networks. In this paper, we examine these problems for real time and non-real time services connections between MANET and fixed nodes. We focus on three different scenarios, where the AODV, the OLSR, or the OSPF with MANET extensions are used as the MANET routing protocol. In all three scenarios, OSPFv2 is used as the Internal Gateway Protocol on the fixed network. Our analysis shows that the AODV presents the best performance in terms of network delays.