Inherent Robustness of Reactive Routing Protocols against Selfish Attacks

Mobile ad-hoc wireless networks generally comprise nodes having meagre computation and communication resources. To perform multi-hop communication in a dynamic topology, these nodes execute special routing protocols. Each node performs the function of a a mobile router and directs packets to other nodes in the network. For accurate functioning of the network it is imperative that all nodes execute these routing protocols in a benevolent manner. However, as ad-hoc networks are usually established in a physically insecure wireless environment, the network memberships are violated allowing malicious nodes to also participate in the network. These nodes can launch an array of attacks against different network services including the routing process. In this paper, we evaluate the performance of three well known reactive routing protocols, in a network with varying numbers of malicious nodes. With the help of exhaustive simulations, we demonstrate that the performance of the three protocols varies significantly even under similar attack, traffic and mobility conditions.