IDRM: Inter-Domain Routing Protocol for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Inter-domain routing is an important component to allow interoperation among heterogeneous network domains operated by different organizations. Although interdomain routing has been extensively studied in the Internet, it remains relatively unexplored in the Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) space. In MANETs, the inter-domain routing problem is challenged by: (1) dynamic network topology, and (2) diverse intra-domain ad hoc routing protocols. In this paper, we propose a networking protocol called IDRM (Inter-Domain Routing Protocol for MANETs) to enable interoperation among MANETs. IDRM can handle the dynamic nature of MANETs and support policy-based routing similarly to BGP. We first discuss the design challenges for inter-domain routing in MANETs, and then present the design of IDRM with illustrative examples. Finally, we present a simulation-based study to understand the operational effectiveness of inter-domain routing and show that the overhead of IDRM is moderate.