On Selecting Representative Faultloads to Guide the Evaluation of Ad Hoc Networks

Ad hoc networks are threatened by a wide variety of accidental and malicious faults. This fact limits the practical exploitation of ad hoc networks. In consequence, apart from enforcing the dependability and security aspects of these networks, the provision of approaches to evaluate their behaviour in the presence of faults and attacks is of paramount importance. Accordingly, analysing and determining which threats should be considered for the evaluation of each particular ad hoc network is an essential task for the definition of representative faultloads. Our previous work focused on evaluating the impact of black and grey hole attacks in real networks using attack injection. This paper enriches the faultload of our experimental platform with five new types of accidental and malicious faults. The goal is to provide the basis for guiding the selection of suitable faultloads when assessing the impact of different threats in different types of ad hoc networks, like wireless sensor networks (WSN) and mobile ad hoc networks (MANET), considering the importance of the applicative context in the interpretation of results.