MMAN - a monitor for mobile ad hoc networks: design, implementation, and experimental evaluation

ABSTRACT

Mobile Ad hoc NETworks (MANETs) are networks in which mobile routers are connected via wireless links forming dynamic topologies. An important function of network management in a MANET is to observe network conditions: at the node level, this may mean keeping track of the traffic load; at the network level, the system must monitor active routes and changes in the network topology. In this research, we introduce a Monitor for Mobile Ad hoc Networks, (MMAN) to address the challenges of monitoring MANETs. We formulate an overall design structure and present an implementation of our framework for a MANET running the Optimized Link State Routing (OLSR) protocol. The unobtrusive and distributed nature of MMAN allows the system to adapt to the constantly changing nature of MANETs and to provide valuable network management, security assessment, and traffic analysis information. Our system produces a dynamic picture of the network level and node level information on a graphical user interface. The system is non-intrusive, generates no additional traffic in the MANET it monitors, and requires only modest processing and storage resources.

REFERENCES

• 1: N. Negroponte, "One Laptop Per Child: Non-Profit Movement for Spreading Education Across the World," Aug. 2006; http://www.laptop.org/.
• 2: Hannah Slay , Peter Wentworth , Jonathon Locke, BingBee, an information kiosk for social enablement in marginalized communities, Proceedings of the 2006 annual research conference of the South African institute of computer scientists and information technologists on IT research in developing countries, p.107-116, October 09-11, 2006, Somerset West, South Africa [doi>10.1145/1216262.1216274]
• 3: Ozone Communications Inc., Wireless Internet Provider, Paris, France, Mar. 2006; http://www.ozone.net/en/reve.html.
• 4: Naval Research Lab (NRL) implementation of Optimized Link State Routing protocol. Oct. 2006; http://pf.itd.nrl.navy.mil/projects.php?name=olsr.
• 5: Vivek Srivastava , Amr B. Hilal , Michael S. Thompson , Jawwad N. Chattha , Allen B. MacKenzie , Luiz A. DaSilva, Characterizing mobile ad hoc networks -: the maniac challenge experiment, Proceedings of the third ACM international workshop on Wireless network testbeds, experimental evaluation and characterization, September 19-19, 2008, San Francisco, California, USA [doi>10.1145/1410077.1410090]
• 6: Remi Badonnel , Radu State , Olivier Festor, Management of mobile ad hoc networks: information model and probe-based architecture, International Journal of Network Management, v.15 n.5, p.335-347, September 2005 [doi>10.1002/nem.577]
• 7: S. Chien-Chung et al., "The GUERILLA Management Architecture for Ad hoc Networks," Proc. Military Comm. Conf. (MILCOM), Oct. 2002. pp. 467--472.
• 8: C. Wenli, J. Nitin and S. Singh, "ANMP: Ad hoc Network Management Protocol," IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Comm., Dec. 1999. pp. 1506--1531.
• 9: E. M. Belding-Royer, K. N. Ramachandran and K. C. Aimeroth, "DAMON: A Distributed Architecture for Monitoring Multi-hop Mobile Networks," Proc. IEEE SECON, Oct. 2004. pp. 601--609.
• 10: Sonja Buchegger , Jean-Yves Le Boudec, Performance analysis of the CONFIDANT protocol, Proceedings of the 3rd ACM international symposium on Mobile ad hoc networking & computing, June 09-11, 2002, Lausanne, Switzerland [doi>10.1145/513800.513828]
• 11: Pietro Michiardi , Refik Molva, Core: a collaborative reputation mechanism to enforce node cooperation in mobile ad hoc networks, Proceedings of the IFIP TC6/TC11 Sixth Joint Working Conference on Communications and Multimedia Security: Advanced Communications and Multimedia Security, p.107-121, September 26-27, 2002
• 12: K. Balakrishnan, D. Jing and V. K. Varshney, "TWOACK: Preventing Selfishness in Mobile Ad hoc Networks," Proc. WCNC, Mar. 2005. pp. 2137--2142.
• 13: Sergio Marti , T. J. Giuli , Kevin Lai , Mary Baker, Mitigating routing misbehavior in mobile ad hoc networks, Proceedings of the 6th annual international conference on Mobile computing and networking, p.255-265, August 06-11, 2000, Boston, Massachusetts, United States [doi>10.1145/345910.345955]
• 14: J. Chen, S. Zhong and Y. R. Yang, "SPRITE: A Simple, Cheat-proof, Creditbased System for Mobile Ad-hoc Networks," Proc. 22nd Annual Joint Conf. of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies (INFOCOM 2003), Mar. 2003. pp. 1987--1997.
• 15: JPCAP: A Java API to Libpcap Packet Capture Utility, Nov. 2006; http://jpcap.sourceforge.net/.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.2 COMPUTER-COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
      C.2.3 Network Operations
          Subjects: Network monitoring

Additional Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.2 COMPUTER-COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
      C.2.3 Network Operations
          Subjects: Network management

General Terms:
Design, Experimentation, Measurement

Keywords:
MANET, experimentation, management, monitoring