Scalable ad hoc routing: the case for dynamic addressing

We show that the use of dynamic addressing can enable scalable routing in ad hoc networks. It is well known that the current ad hoc protocol suites do not scale to work efficiently in networks of more than a few hundred nodes. Most current ad hoc routing architectures use flat static addressing and thus, need to keep track of each node individually, creating a massive overhead problem as the network grows. Could dynamic addressing alleviate this problem? To begin to answer this question, we provide an initial design of a routing layer based on dynamic addressing, and evaluate its performance. Each node has a unique permanent identifier and a transient routing address, which indicates its location in the network at any given time. The main challenge is dynamic address allocation in the face of node mobility. We propose mechanisms to implement dynamic addressing efficiently. Our initial evaluation suggests that dynamic addressing is a promising approach for achieving scalable routing in meganode ad hoc networks.