Introducing name resolution into OLSR

Abstract

Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANETs) are wireless networks consisting of autonomous nodes that exist in an infrastructure-less environment. There are no centralized servers and no hierarchy of nodes. The Domain Name System (DNS) is important to million of nodes that are located in the Internet. Through a huge amount of DNS servers spread around the world, they serve a name resolution service to all nodes existing in Internet. Users of the Internet have the advantage of using hostnames or fully qualified domain names to communicate with another host. Because of the fast growth of MANETs, where they tend to be large and dense, a name resolution service is also desired for these networks. Since MANETs are characterized by unstable topology the existing DNS can not work in MANETs. Optimized Link State Routing (OLSR) is a routing algorithm designed for MANETs that propagate IP addresses through periodically emitted control messages. These control messages are broadcasted through the Multipoint Relay (MPR) flooding scheme, which reduces the total amount of overhead. This thesis investigates the possibilities of designing and implementing a distributed name resolution service for MANETs based on the existing Optimized Link State Routing (OLSR) algorithm by extending the existing control messages and data sets. The efficiency and generated overhead are measured to compare this solution together with existing solutions.