Abbreviated Dynamic Source Routing: Source Routing with Non-Unique Network Identifiers

Current ad-hoc network protocols are designed for hosts similar to the ones that are used in fixed networks. These protocols are not suitable for some applications of ad-hoc networks, where resources are very scarce. One point is the size of the network addresses, which may be a critical issue, specially with the use of IPv6 in the DSR protocol. This is because this protocol uses source routing, and, therefore, each datagram must carry the addresses of all the machines in its path. In this paper a new protocol named ADSR is proposed to solve this problem. This new protocol is a modified version of DSR based on the use of abbreviated addresses. The abbreviation procedure can lead to two different nodes having the same address, which we will term collision. ADSR allows rather than averts collisions, as analysed in this paper. Some results on the performance of this new protocol are shown. These results have been obtained by simulations implemented on an ns-2 network simulator.