VULNERABILITIES AND SOLUTIONS: MOBILE AD HOC NETWORKS (MANETs) FOR OPTIMAL ROUTING AND SECURITY

This paper present the impact of some of the unique characteristics, like shared wireless medium, stringent resource constraints, highly dynamic network topology, and peer to peer, multi-hop autonomous network architecture, of MANETs from a wide perspective. These additional features never come for free as they make the routing and other services more challenging and causes vulnerabilities in network services. Resource constrained, battery powered wireless mobile nodes not only have to self configure and self monitor them but also generates a very accommodating, trustworthy and affable environment. Recent advances in wireless networks have led to enhance existing protocols specifically designed for mobile ad hoc networks. We present a classification of routing protocols and their brief description, based on their operating principles and underlying features.