CoreASM-based Evaluation of the N-AODV Protocol for Mobile Ad-hoc Networks

Network topology awareness (NTA) is a fundamental issue in the context of computer networks: the lack of control over the topology can negatively impact performance, security, resilience, and so on. However, in Mobile Ad-hoc NETworks (MANETs), NTA is difficult to achieve because of their dynamicity. Different reactive protocols for MANETs, in which routes are established only when needed, provide different NTA to each host, depending on their algorithmic features. NACK-based AODV (N-AODV) is a variant of the well-known Ad-hoc On-demand Distance Vector (AODV) reactive protocol for MANETs which we proposed with the aim of improving the NTA of the original protocol. In this paper, an experiment aimed at comparing N-AODV to AODV is reported; it moves from an exploratory case study we conducted preliminarily. The results obtained show that a MANET adopting N-AODV exploits higher NTA than a MANET adopting AODV. Moreover, the improved awareness positively impacts effectiveness.