ZCOER Subject: Mobile Computing A. Y.

2024-25

Zeal Education Society’s

Zeal College of Engineering & Research

Department: Computer Engineering

Class: BE Div.: A & B

A. Y.: 2024-25

Subject: Mobile Computing (Elective IV)

Course Code: 410245 (C)

Course Notes (UNIT V)

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 ZCOER Subject: Mobile Computing A. Y. 2024-25

UNIT V

MOBILE NETWORK AND TRANSPORT LAYERS

TOPIC 1: MOBILE IP

 Mobile IP is a communication protocol (created by extending Internet Protocol, IP)

that allows the users to move from one network to another with the same IP address.
 It ensures that the communication will continue without user’s sessions or
connections being dropped.
 This is an IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) standard communications protocol
designed to allow mobile devices' (such as laptop, PDA, mobile phone, etc.) users to
move from one network to another while maintaining their permanent IP (Internet
Protocol) address.
 Defined in RFC (Request for Comments) 2002, mobile IP is an enhancement of the
internet protocol (IP) that adds mechanisms for forwarding internet traffic to mobile
devices (known as mobile nodes) when they are connecting through other than their
home network.

 Terminologies:

• Mobile Node (MN): It is the hand-held communication device that the user carries
e.g. Cell phone.
• Home Network: It is a network to which the mobile node originally belongs to as
per its assigned IP address (home address).
• Home Agent (HA): It is a router in home network to which the mobile node was
originally connected
• Home Address: It is the permanent IP address assigned to the mobile node (within
its home network).
• Foreign Network: It is the current network to which the mobile node is visiting
(away from its home network).
• Foreign Agent (FA): It is a router in foreign network to which mobile node is
currently connected. The packets from the home agent are sent to the foreign agent
which delivers it to the mobile node.
• Correspondent Node (CN): It is a device on the internet communicating to the
mobile node.
• Care of Address (COA): It is the temporary address used by a mobile node while it
is moving away from its home network.

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Working:
 Correspondent node sends the data to the mobile node.
 Data packets contains correspondent node’s address (Source) and home address
(Destination). Packets reaches to the home agent. But now mobile node is not in the
home network, it has moved into the foreign network.
 Foreign agent sends the care-of-address to the home agent to which all the packets
should be sent. Now, a tunnel will be established between the home agent and the
foreign agent by the process of tunneling.
 Tunneling establishes a virtual pipe for the packets available between a tunnel entry
and an endpoint. It is the process of sending a packet via a tunnel and it is achieved by
a mechanism called encapsulation.
 Now, home agent encapsulates the data packets into new packets in which the source
address is the home address and destination is the care-of-address and sends it through
the tunnel to the foreign agent.
 Foreign agent, on other side of the tunnel receives the data packets, decapsulates them
and sends them to the mobile node. Mobile node in response to the data packets
received, sends a reply in response to foreign agent. Foreign agent directly sends the
reply to the correspondent node.

 Key Mechanisms in Mobile IP:

 1. Agent Discovery: Agents advertise their presence by periodically broadcasting their

agent advertisement messages. The mobile node receiving the agent advertisement
messages observes whether the message is from its own home agent and determines
whether it is in the home network or foreign network.

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 2. Agent Registration: Mobile node after discovering the foreign agent, sends
registration request (RREQ) to the foreign agent. Foreign agent in turn, sends the
registration request to the home agent with the care-of-address. Home agent sends
registration reply (RREP) to the foreign agent. Then it forwards the registration reply
to the mobile node and completes the process of registration.

 2. Tunneling: It establishes a virtual pipe for the packets available between a tunnel
entry and an endpoint. It is the process of sending a packet via a tunnel and it is
achieved by a mechanism called encapsulation. It takes place to forward an IP
datagram from the home agent to the care-of address. Whenever home agent receives
a packet from correspondent node, it encapsulates the packet with source address as
home address and destination as care-of-address.

 Route Optimization in Mobile IP: The route optimization adds a conceptual data
structure, the binding cache, to the correspondent node.
 The binding cache contains two bindings for mobile node’s home address and its
current care-of-address. Every time the home agent receives an IP datagram that is
destined to a mobile node currently away from the home network, it sends a binding
update to the correspondent node to update the information in the correspondent
node’s binding cache. After this the correspondent node can directly tunnel packets to
the mobile node.

Process of Mobile IP:

The mobile IP process has following three main phases, which are:

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1. Agent Discovery: During the agent discovery phase the HA and FA advertise their services
on the network by using the ICMP router discovery protocol (IROP).

Mobile IP defines two methods: agent advertisement and agent solicitation which are in fact
router discovery methods plus extensions.

 Agent advertisement:
For the first method, FA and HA advertise their presence periodically using special
agent advertisement messages. These messages advertisement can be seen as a beacon
broadcast into the subnet. For this advertisement internet control message protocol
(ICMP) messages according to RFC 1256, are used with some mobility extensions.

 Agent solicitation: If no agent advertisements are present or the inter arrival time is
too high, and an MN has not received a COA, the mobile node must send agent
solicitations. These solicitations are again based on RFC 1256 for router solicitations.

2. Registration: The main purpose of the registration is to inform the home agent of the
current location for correct forwarding of packets.

Registration can be done in two ways depending on the location of the COA.

 If the COA is at the FA, the MN sends its registration request containing the COA to
the FA which is forwarding the request to the HA. The HA now set up a mobility
binding containing the mobile node's home IP address and the current COA.
Additionally, the mobility binding contains the lifetime of the registration which is
negotiated during the registration process. Registration expires automatically after the
lifetime and is deleted; so a mobile node should register before expiration. After
setting up the mobility binding, the HA send a reply message back to the FA which
forwards it to the MN.

 If the COA is co-located, registration can be very simpler. The mobile node may send
the request directly to the HA and vice versa. This by the way is also the registration
procedure for MNs returning to their home network.

3. Tunneling: A tunnel is used to establish a virtual pipe for data packets between a tunnel
entry and a tunnel endpoint. Packets which are entering in a tunnel are forwarded inside the
tunnel and leave the tunnel unchanged. Tunneling, i.e., sending a packet through a tunnel is
achieved with the help of encapsulation. Tunneling is also known as "port forwarding" is the
transmission and data intended for use only within a private, usually corporate network
through a public network.

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TOPIC 2: IP PACKET DELIVERY

The mobile i.e movement of MN from one location to another has to be hidden as per the
requirement of mobile IP. CN may not know the exact location of MN

STEP 1: CN sends the packet as usual to the IP address of MN. With Source address as CN
and Destination address as MN .The internet, which does not have any information of the
current location of MN, routes the packet to the router responsible for the home network of
MN. This is done using the standard routing mechanisms of the internet.
STEP 2: The HA now diverts the packet, knowing that MN is currently not in its home
network. The packet is not forwarded into the subnet as usual, but encapsulated and tunnelled
to the COA. A new header is put in front of the old IP header showing the COA as new
destination and HA as source of the encapsulated packet.
STEP 3: The foreign agent (FA) now decapsulates the packet, i.e., removes the additional
header(newly added as COA as destination and HA as source), and forwards the original

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packet with CN as source and MN as destination to the MN. Again, for the MN mobility is
not visible.
Finally the MN Receives the packet with the Source address as CN and Destination address
as MN.
STEP 4: The MN sends the packet MN as Source Address and CN as Destination Address.
The router with the FA acts as default router and forwards the packet in the same way as it
would do for any other node in the foreign network. Simple mechanism works if CN is Fixed
at a location if it has got mobility then the above Steps 1 to 3 are to be followed to deliver the
packet from MN to CN.

TOPIC 3: IPv6
IPv6 or Internet Protocol Version 6 is a network layer protocol that allows communication
to take place over the network. IPv6 was designed by the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF) in December 1998 with the purpose of superseding IPv4 due to the global
exponentially growing internet of users.

The next generation Internet Protocol (IP) address standard, known as IPv6, is meant to
work in tandem with IPv4, which is still in widespread use today, and eventually replace it.
To communicate with other devices, a computer, smartphone, home automation component,
Internet of Things sensor, or any other Internet-connected device needs a numerical IP
address. Because so many connected devices are being used, the original IP address
scheme, known as IPv4, is running out of addresses.

Representation of IPv6
An IPv6 address consists of eight groups of four hexadecimal digits separated by ‘ . ‘ and
each Hex digit representing four bits so the total length of IPv6 is 128 bits. Structure given
below.

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The first 48 bits represent Global Routing Prefix. The next 16 bits represent the student ID
and the last 64 bits represent the host ID. The first 64 bits represent the network portion and
the last 64 bits represent the interface id.
Global Routing Prefix: The Global Routing Prefix is the portion of an IPv6 address that is
used to identify a specific network or subnet within the larger IPv6 internet. It is assigned
by an ISP or a regional internet registry (RIR).
Student Id: The portion of the address used within an organization to identify subnets.
This usually follows the Global Routing Prefix.
Host Id: The last part of the address, is used to identify a specific host on a network.
Example: 3001:0da8:75a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334
Types of IPv6 Address
Now that we know about what is IPv6 address let’s take a look at its different types.
 Unicast Addresses : Only one interface is specified by the unicast address. A packet
moves from one host to the destination host when it is sent to a unicast address
destination.
 Multicast Addresses: It represents a group of IP devices and can only be used as the
destination of a datagram.
 Anycast Addresses: The multicast address and the anycast address are the same. The
way the anycast address varies from other addresses is that it can deliver the same IP
address to several servers or devices. Keep in mind that the hosts do not receive the IP
address. Stated differently, multiple interfaces or a collection of interfaces are assigned
an anycast address.

Advantages
 Faster Speeds: IPv6 supports multicast rather than broadcast in IPv4.This feature
allows bandwidth-intensive packet flows (like multimedia streams) to be sent to
multiple destinations all at once.
 Stronger Security: IPSecurity, which provides confidentiality, and data integrity, is
embedded into IPv6.
 Routing efficiency
 Reliability
 Most importantly it’s the final solution for growing nodes in Global-network.
 The device allocates addresses on its own.
 Internet protocol security is used to support security.
 Enable simple aggregation of prefixes allocated to IP networks; this saves bandwidth by
enabling the simultaneous transmission of large data packages.

Disadvantages
 Conversion: Due to widespread present usage of IPv4 it will take a long period to
completely shift to IPv6.
 Communication: IPv4 and IPv6 machines cannot communicate directly with each
other.
 Not Going Backward Compatibility: IPv6 cannot be executed on IPv4-capable
computers because it is not available on IPv4 systems.
 Conversion Time: One significant drawback of IPv6 is its inability to uniquely identify
each device on the network, which makes the conversion to IPV4 extremely time-
consuming.
 Cross-protocol communication is forbidden since there is no way for IPv4 and IPv6 to
communicate with each other.

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TOPIC 4: DHCP

DHCP stands for Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol. It is the critical feature on which
the users of an enterprise network communicate. DHCP helps enterprises to smoothly
manage the allocation of IP addresses to the end-user clients’ devices such as desktops,
laptops, cellphones, etc. is an application layer protocol that is used to provide:

Subnet Mask (Option 1 - e.g., 255.255.255.0)

Router Address (Option 3 - e.g., 192.168.1.1)
DNS Address (Option 6 - e.g., 8.8.8.8)
Vendor Class Identifier (Option 43 - e.g.,
'unifi' = 192.168.1.9 ##where unifi = controller)

DHCP is based on a client-server model and based on discovery, offer, request, and ACK.

Why Do We Use DHCP?

DHCP helps in managing the entire process automatically and centrally. DHCP helps in
maintaining a unique IP Address for a host using the server. DHCP servers maintain
information on TCP/IP configuration and provide configuration of address to DHCP-
enabled clients in the form of a lease offer.

Components of DHCP:

The main components of DHCP include:

 DHCP Server: DHCP Server is a server that holds IP Addresses and other information
related to configuration.
 DHCP Client: It is a device that receives configuration information from the server. It
can be a mobile, laptop, computer, or any other electronic device that requires a
connection.
 DHCP Relay: DHCP relays basically work as a communication channel between
DHCP Client and Server.
 IP Address Pool: It is the pool or container of IP Addresses possessed by the DHCP
Server. It has a range of addresses that can be allocated to devices.
 Subnets: Subnets are smaller portions of the IP network partitioned to keep networks
under control.
 Lease: It is simply the time that how long the information received from the server is
valid, in case of expiration of the lease, the tenant must have to re-assign the lease.
 DNS Servers: DHCP servers can also provide DNS (Domain Name System) server
information to DHCP clients, allowing them to resolve domain names to IP addresses.
 Default Gateway: DHCP servers can also provide information about the default
gateway, which is the device that packets are sent to when the destination is outside the
local network.
 Options: DHCP servers can provide additional configuration options to clients, such as
the subnet mask, domain name, and time server information.
 Renewal: DHCP clients can request to renew their lease before it expires to ensure that
they continue to have a valid IP address and configuration information.

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 Failover: DHCP servers can be configured for failover, where two servers work
together to provide redundancy and ensure that clients can always obtain an IP address
and configuration information, even if one server goes down.
 Dynamic Updates: DHCP servers can also be configured to dynamically update DNS
records with the IP address of DHCP clients, allowing for easier management of
network resources.
 Audit Logging: DHCP servers can keep audit logs of all DHCP transactions, providing
administrators with visibility into which devices are using which IP addresses and when
leases are being assigned or renewed.

DHCP Packet Format

 Hardware Length: This is an 8-bit field defining the length of the physical address in
bytes. e.g for Ethernet the value is 6.
 Hop count: This is an 8-bit field defining the maximum number of hops the packet can
travel.

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 Transaction ID: This is a 4-byte field carrying an integer. The transcation

identification is set by the client and is used to match a reply with the request. The
server returns the same value in its reply.
 Number of Seconds: This is a 16-bit field that indicates the number of seconds elapsed
since the time the client started to boot.
 Flag: This is a 16-bit field in which only the leftmost bit is used and the rest of the bit
should be set to os. A leftmost bit specifies a forced broadcast reply from the server. If
the reply were to be unicast to the client, the destination. IP address of the IP packet is
the address assigned to the client.
 Client IP Address: This is a 4-byte field that contains the client IP address . If the
client does not have this information this field has a value of 0.
 Your IP Address: This is a 4-byte field that contains the client IP address. It is filled
by the server at the request of the client.
 Server IP Address: This is a 4-byte field containing the server IP address. It is filled
by the server in a reply message.
 Gateway IP Address: This is a 4-byte field containing the IP address of a routers. IT is
filled by the server in a reply message.
 Client Hardware Address: This is the physical address of the client .Although the
server can retrieve this address from the frame sent by the client it is more efficient if
the address is supplied explicity by the client in the request message.
 Server Name: This is a 64-byte field that is optionally filled by the server in a reply
packet. It contains a null-terminated string consisting of the domain name of the server.
If the server does not want to fill this filed with data, the server must fill it with all 0s.
 Boot Filename: This is a 128-byte field that can be optionally filled by the server in a
reply packet. It contains a null- terminated string consisting of the full pathname of the
boot file. The client can use this path to retrieve other booting information. If the server
does not want to fill this field with data, the server must fill it with all 0s.
 Options: This is a 64-byte field with a dual purpose. IT can carry either additional
information or some specific vendor information. The field is used only in a reply
message. The server uses a number, called a magic cookie, in the format of an IP
address with the value of 99.130.83.99. When the client finishes reading the message, it
looks for this magic cookie. If present the next 60 bytes are options.

Working of DHCP
DHCP works on the Application layer of the UDP Protocol.
The main task of DHCP is to dynamically assigns IP Addresses to the Clients and allocate
information on TCP/IP configuration to Clients.
The DHCP port number for the server is 67 and for the client is 68. It is a client-server
protocol that uses UDP services. An IP address is assigned from a pool of addresses. In
DHCP, the client and the server exchange mainly 4 DHCP messages in order to make a
connection, also called the DORA process, but there are 8 DHCP messages in the process.

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The 8 DHCP Messages

1. DHCP Discover Message: This is the first message generated in the communication
process between the server and the client. This message is generated by the Client host in
order to discover if there is any DHCP server/servers are present in a network or not. This
message is broadcasted to all devices present in a network to find the DHCP server. This
message is 342 or 576 bytes long.

As shown in the figure, the source MAC address (client PC) is 08002B2EAF2A, the
destination MAC address(server) is FFFFFFFFFFFF, the source IP address is
0.0.0.0(because the PC has had no IP address till now) and the destination IP address is
255.255.255.255 (IP address used for broadcasting). As they discover message is broadcast
to find out the DHCP server or servers in the network therefore broadcast IP address and
MAC address is used.

2. DHCP Offers A Message: The server will respond to the host in this message
specifying the unleased IP address and other TCP configuration information. This message
is broadcasted by the server. The size of the message is 342 bytes. If there is more than one
DHCP server present in the network then the client host will accept the first DHCP OFFER

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message it receives. Also, a server ID is specified in the packet in order to identify the
server.

Now, for the offer message, the source IP address is 172.16.32.12 (server’s IP address in
the example), the destination IP address is 255.255.255.255 (broadcast IP address), the
source MAC address is 00AA00123456, the destination MAC address is 00:11:22:33:44:55
(client’s MAC address). Here, the offer message is broadcast by the DHCP server therefore
destination IP address is the broadcast IP address and destination MAC address is
00:11:22:33:44:55 (client’s MAC address)and the source IP address is the server IP address
and the MAC address is the server MAC address.
Also, the server has provided the offered IP address 192.16.32.51 and a lease time of 72
hours(after this time the entry of the host will be erased from the server automatically).
Also, the client identifier is the PC MAC address (08002B2EAF2A) for all the messages.

3. DHCP Request Message: When a client receives an offer message, it responds by

broadcasting a DHCP request message. The client will produce a gratuitous ARP in order
to find if there is any other host present in the network with the same IP address. If there is
no reply from another host, then there is no host with the same TCP configuration in the
network and the message is broadcasted to the server showing the acceptance of the IP
address. A Client ID is also added to this message.

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Now, the request message is broadcast by the client PC therefore source IP address is
0.0.0.0(as the client has no IP right now) and destination IP address is 255.255.255.255 (the
broadcast IP address) and the source MAC address is 08002B2EAF2A (PC MAC address)
and destination MAC address is FFFFFFFFFFFF.
Note – This message is broadcast after the ARP request broadcast by the PC to find out
whether any other host is not using that offered IP. If there is no reply, then the client host
broadcast the DHCP request message for the server showing the acceptance of the IP
address and Other TCP/IP Configuration.

4. DHCP Acknowledgment Message: In response to the request message received, the

server will make an entry with a specified client ID and bind the IP address offered with
lease time. Now, the client will have the IP address provided by the server. Now the server
will make an entry of the client host with the offered IP address and lease time. This IP
address will not be provided by the server to any other host. The destination MAC address
is 00:11:22:33:44:55 (client’s MAC address) and the destination IP address is
255.255.255.255 and the source IP address is 172.16.32.12 and the source MAC address is
00AA00123456 (server MAC address).

5.DHCP Negative Acknowledgment Message: Whenever a DHCP server receives a

request for an IP address that is invalid according to the scopes that are configured, it sends

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a DHCP Nak message to the client. Eg-when the server has no IP address unused or the
pool is empty, then this message is sent by the server to the client.
6. DHCP Decline: If the DHCP client determines the offered configuration parameters are
different or invalid, it sends a DHCP decline message to the server. When there is a reply to
the gratuitous ARP by any host to the client, the client sends a DHCP decline message to
the server showing the offered IP address is already in use.
7. DHCP Release: A DHCP client sends a DHCP release packet to the server to release the
IP address and cancel any remaining lease time.
8. DHCP Inform: If a client address has obtained an IP address manually then the client
uses DHCP information to obtain other local configuration parameters, such as domain
name. In reply to the DHCP inform message, the DHCP server generates a DHCP ack
message with a local configuration suitable for the client without allocating a new IP
address. This DHCP ack message is unicast to the client.
Note – All the messages can be unicast also by the DHCP relay agent if the server is
present in a different network.

Security Considerations for Using DHCP

To make sure your DHCP servers are safe, consider these DHCP security issues:
 Limited IP Addresses : A DHCP server can only offer a set number of IP addresses.
This means attackers could flood the server with requests, causing essential devices to
lose their connection.
 Fake DHCP Servers : Attackers might set up fake DHCP servers to give out fake IP
addresses to devices on your network.
 DNS Access : When users get an IP address from DHCP, they also get DNS server
details. This could potentially allow them to access more data than they should. It’s
important to restrict network access, use firewalls, and secure connections with VPNs to
protect against this.

Protection Against DHCP Starvation Attack
A DHCP starvation attack happens when a hacker floods a DHCP server with requests for
IP addresses. This overwhelms the server, making it unable to assign addresses to
legitimate users. The hacker can then block access for authorized users and potentially set
up a fake DHCP server to intercept and manipulate network traffic, which could lead to
a man-in-the-middle attack.

Reasons Why Enterprises Must Automate DHCP?

Automating your DHCP system is crucial for businesses because it reduces the time and
effort your IT team spends on manual tasks. For instance, DHCP-related issues like printers
not connecting or subnets not working with the main network can be avoided automatically.
Automated DHCP also allows your operations to grow smoothly. Instead of hiring more
staff to handle tasks that automation can manage, your team can focus on other important
areas of business growth.

Advantages
 Centralized management of IP addresses.
 Centralized and automated TCP/IP configuration .
 Ease of adding new clients to a network.
 Reuse of IP addresses reduces the total number of IP addresses that are required.

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 The efficient handling of IP address changes for clients that must be updated frequently,
such as those for portable devices that move to different locations on a wireless
network.
 Simple reconfiguration of the IP address space on the DHCP server without needing to
reconfigure each client.
 The DHCP protocol gives the network administrator a method to configure the network
from a centralized area.
 With the help of DHCP, easy handling of new users and the reuse of IP addresses can
be achieved.

Disadvantages
 IP conflict can occur.
 The problem with DHCP is that clients accept any server. Accordingly, when another
server is in the vicinity, the client may connect with this server, and this server may
possibly send invalid data to the client.
 The client is not able to access the network in absence of a DHCP Server.
 The name of the machine will not be changed in a case when a new IP Address is
assigned.

TOPIC 5: VANET
Mobile vehicles in VANET might play the role of stationary sensors in infrastructure-based
networks. They can detect, gather and disseminate real-time data about traffic, driving
conditions and potential hazards on roads.

VANET Architecture:

VANET components are classified into three domains:

Mobile domain includes the vehicle and the mobile device domains.

The former comprises all type of vehicles (e.g., cars, trains, buses). The latter includes all
types of portable devices (e.g., smartphones, laptop, smart watches).

 Infrastructure domain incorporates the roadside infrastructure domain (e.g., traffic light,
camera, etc.) and the central infrastructure domain (e.g., Traffic Management Centres
(TMCs), Vehicle Management Centres).

 Generic domain includes the Internet and the Private infrastructures.

The reference architecture of the C2C Communication System, comprises the following
domains:

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 In-vehicle domain is composed of one or multiple application units (AUs) and one
OnBoard Unit (OBU). An AU is a dedicated device, which can be an integrated part of a
vehicle or a separate portable device such as smartphone, laptop, etc. It runs one or many
applications that exploit the OBU communication capabilities. The AUs and OBU are
permanently connected through a wired or wireless connection.

 Ad-hoc domain is composed of vehicles equipped with OBUs and stationary Road-Side
Units (RSUs) deployed in specific locations along the road. OBUs can communicate each
with other, directly or via multi-hop, using wireless short-range communication devices
allowing ad-hoc communications between vehicles. An RSU is a stationary device that can be
connected to an infrastructure network or to the Internet. It can send, receive or forward data
in the ad-hoc domain (i.e., vehicles equipped with OBUs and RSUs), which enables to extend
the coverage of the ad-hoc network. An OBU may access to the Internet via an infrastructure
connected RSU, public commercial or private wireless Hot Spots (HSs) to communicate with
Internet nodes or servers.

 Infrastructure domain access consists of HSs and RSUs. In case that neither RSUs nor
HSs provide Internet access, OBUs can exploit cellular radio networks for example HSDPA,
WiMax and 4G.

Communication Architecture

 In-vehicle communication between OBU of the vehicle and its AUs.

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 Vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) wireless communications between vehicles via their OBUs.

 Vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) refers to bidirectional wireless communications between

vehicles and infrastructure-connected RSUs.

 Infrastructure-to-Infrastructure (I2I) communications between RSUs enable extending the

coverage of the network.

 Vehicle-to-broadband cloud (V2B) communications between vehicles and broadband cloud

via wireless broadband technologies such as 3G/4G.

Characteristics of VANETs

 Mobility: VANETs are mainly composed of fixed RSUs and moving vehicles.
Vehicle’s speed varies from very low to very high, leading to new communication
challenges. Indeed, in areas of high traffic jam, vehicles are stopped or moving slowly
and therefore they have enough time to exchange messages. However, they face major
challenges due to the high density of vehicles such as data collision, channel fading,
message dropping and other interference problems. In areas of low traffic (e.g.,
highway), vehicle speed is very high leading to others communication challenges such
as small communication window (few seconds), link failures, high end-to-end (ETE)
delay, etc.
 Movement pattern: node movement in VANETs differs from that of Mobile Ad-hoc
Networks (MANETs). In fact, in MANETs, mobile nodes are free to move anywhere
at any time. However, in VANET, vehicles follow the topology of road networks of
the geographic areas where they drive. In general, there are three situations: urban
area, rural area and highway. As shown in Figure 2, the urban area has more complex
road network, denser in terms of vehicles number than the rural area. Furthermore, it
contains more obstacles, traffic signals and RSUs whenever compared to rural area
and highway. In the latter, vehicles move in one direction over many lanes. The
spatial attributes of the road network have an impact on the communication efficiency
and effectiveness.

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 Traffic density: it ranges from high to low density, depending on the geographic area
(i.e., high traffic density in urban area and low traffic density in rural area and
highway) and the time factor (i.e., low traffic density during off-peak hours and high
traffic during rush hours). Traffic density raises crucial challenges related to the
design of efficient VANET communication protocols. For instance, in rural areas with
very low traffic density, data dissemination protocols must deal with the network
disconnection issue. However, advanced data dissemination mechanisms should be
used to avoid the wellknown broadcast storm issue in the case of very high traffic
density, especially in urban area during rush hours.
 Heterogeneity: VANET nodes have different characteristics and capabilities. For
instance, vehicles are moving nodes, which have different communication ranges,
sensing capabilities and categories (i.e., private, authority and maintenance vehicles).
Whereas RSUs are stationary nodes placed in some pertinent locations and equipped
with complete ad-hoc features.

TOPIC 6: MANET

A MANET is a decentralized wireless network consisting of mobile devices (nodes) that

communicate with each other without relying on a fixed infrastructure. MANET forms a
highly dynamic autonomous topology with the presence of one or multiple different
transceivers between nodes. MANETs consist of a peer-to-peer, self-forming, self-healing
network MANETs circa 2000-2015 typically communicate at radio frequencies (30MHz-
5GHz). This can be used in road safety, ranging from sensors for the environment, home,
health, disaster rescue operations, air/land/navy defense, weapons, robots, etc.

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Characteristics of MANET
 Dynamic Topologies: Network topology which is typically multihop may change
randomly and rapidly with time, it can form unidirectional or bi-directional links.
 Bandwidth constrained, variable capacity links: Wireless links usually have lower
reliability, efficiency, stability, and capacity as compared to a wired network
 Autonomous Behavior: Each node can act as a host and router, which shows its
autonomous behavior.
 Energy Constrained Operation: As some or all the nodes rely on batteries or other
exhaustible means for their energy. Mobile nodes are characterized by less memory,
power, and lightweight features.
 Limited Security: Wireless networks are more prone to security threats. A
centralized firewall is absent due to the distributed nature of the operation for security,
routing, and host configuration.
 Less Human Intervention: They require minimum human intervention to configure
the network, therefore they are dynamically autonomous in nature.

Advantages of MANET
 Separation from central network administration.
 Each node can play both the roles ie. of router and host showing autonomous nature.
 Self-configuring and self-healing nodes do not require human intervention.
 Highly scalable and suits the expansion of more network hub.

Disadvantages of MANET
 Resources are limited due to various constraints like noise, interference conditions, etc.
 Lack of authorization facilities.
 More prone to attacks due to limited physical security.
 High latency i.e. There is a huge delay in the transfer of data between two sleeping
nodes.

Improvement in MANET
 Quality of Service (QoS): Researchers are working to improve the quality of service of
MANET by developing efficient routing protocols that provide better bandwidth,
throughput, and latency.

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 Security: To ensure the security of the MANET, researchers are developing efficient
security mechanisms that provide encryption, authentication, and
authorization facilities.
 Power management: To enhance the lifetime of MANET nodes, researchers are
working on developing efficient power management techniques that reduce the energy
consumption of nodes.
 Multimedia support: Researchers are working to provide multimedia support to
MANET by developing efficient routing protocols that can handle multimedia traffic
efficiently.
 Standardization: To ensure the interoperability of different MANET devices,
researchers are working on developing standard protocols and interfaces that can be
used by different MANET devices.

Applications of MANET
 Military and Defense Operations
 Healthcare
 Sensor Networks
 Wireless Sensor Networks
 Internet of Things (IoT)

TOPIC 7: TRADITIONAL TCP, SNOOPING TCP, MOBILE TCP

TRADITIONAL TCP:

Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is the transport layer protocol that serves as an
interface between client and server. The TCP/IP protocol is used to transfer the data packets
between transport layer and network layer. Transport protocol is mainly designed for fixed
end systems and fixed, wired networks. In simple terms, the traditional TCP is defined as a
wired network while classical TCP uses wireless approach. Mainly TCP is designed for fixed
networks and fixed, wired networks.
The main research activities in TCP are as listed below.
1. Congestion control:

During data transmission from sender to receiver, sometimes the data packet may be lost. It is
not because of hardware or software problem. Whenever the packet loss is confirmed, the
probable reason might be the temporary overload at some point in the transmission path. This
temporary overload is otherwise called as Congestion.
Congestion is caused often even when the network is designed perfectly. The transmission
speed of receiver may not be equal to the transmission speed of the sender. if the capacity of
the sender is more than the capacity of output link, then the packet buffer of a router is filled
and the router cannot forward the packets fast enough. The only thing the router can do in this
situation is to drop some packets.
The receiver sense the packet loss but does not send message regarding packet loss to the
sender. Instead, the receiver starts to send acknowledgement for all the received packets and
the sender soon identifies the missing acknowledgement. The sender now notices that a
packet is lost and slows down the transmission process. By this, the congestion is reduced.
This feature of TCP is one of the reason for its demand even today.

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2. Slow start:

The behavior TCP shows after the detection of congestion is called as slow start. The sender
always calculates a congestion window for a receiver. At first the sender sends a packet and
waits for the acknowledgement. Once the acknowledgement is back it doubles the packet size
and sends two packets. After receiving two acknowledgements, one for each packet, the
sender again doubles the packet size and this process continues. This is called Exponential
growth.
It is dangerous to double the congestion window each time because the steps might become
too large. The exponential growth stops at congestion threshold. As it reaches congestion
threshold, the increase in transmission rate becomes linear (i.e., the increase is only by 1).
Linear increase continues until the sender notices gap between the acknowledgments. In this
case, the sender sets the size of congestion window to half of its congestion threshold and the
process continues.
3. Fast re-transmission:

In TCP, two things lead to a reduction of the congestion threshold. One of those is sender
receiving continuous acknowledgements for the single packet. By this it can convey either of
two things. One such thing is that the receiver received all the packets up to the
acknowledged one and the other thing is the gap is due to packet loss. Now the sender
immediately re-transmit the missing packet before the given time expires. This is called as
Fast re-transmission.

Example:
Assume that few packets of data are being transferred from sender to receiver, and the speed
of sender is 2 Mbps and the speed of receiver is 1 Mbps respectively. Now the packets that
are being transferred from sender sender to receiver makes a traffic jam inside the network.
Due to this the network may drop some of the packets. When these packets are lost, the
receiver sends the acknowledgement to the sender and the sender identifies the missing
acknowledgement. This process is called as congestion control.
Now the slowstart mechanism takes up the plan. The sender slows down the packet transfer
and then the traffic is slightly reduces. After sometime it puts a request to fast re-transmission
through which the missing packets can be sent again as fast as possible. After all these
mechanisms, the process of next packet begins.

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SNOOPING TCP:

Snooping TCP is one of the classical TCP improvement approaches. This approach is
designed to solve the end-to-end semantics loss in I-TCP. The basic concept is to buffer
packets close to the mobile node and retransmit them locally if a packet is lost.

Working of Snooping TCP :

Here, we will discuss the working of TCP as follows.

 Until it receives an acknowledgement from the mobile node, the foreign agent buffers
the packet.
 A foreign agent snoops the packet flow and acknowledgement in both directions.
 If the foreign agent does not receive an acknowledgement from the mobile node, or if it
receives duplicate acknowledgements, it believes that the packet or acknowledgement
has been lost. The packet is immediately retransmitted by the foreign agent from its
buffer.
 In addition, the foreign agent maintains its own timer for retransmission of buffered
packets in case it is lost on the wireless link.
 While data transfer from the mobile node to the correspondent node, if the foreign agent
detects a missing packet, it returns NACK-Negative Acknowledgment to the mobile
node. It can now retransmit missing packet immediately. Reordering of packets is done
automatically at the correspondent node by TCP.
 In the concept of snooping TCP, the Time-out of the correspondent node still works and
triggers retransmission, If the foreign agent now crashes. The foreign agent may discard
duplicates of packets already retransmitted locally and acknowledged by the mobile
node. This avoids unnecessary traffic on the wireless link.
 To maintain transparency foreign agent does not acknowledge the packet to the fixed
node, but the mobile node acknowledges the packets(END-TO-END Semantics is
maintained).

Advantages:

Here, we will discuss the advantages as follows.

1. The end-to-end TCP semantic is preserved –

The packet is not acknowledged by the FA. And if the foreign agent (FA) or base
station (BS) fails, the solution reverts to standard TCP.

2. No Modifications at Fixed Host –

The fixed computer TCP does not need any changes. The majority of the changes are
made at the foreign agent (FA).

3. No packet loss during handovers –

In the case of a handover, if any data is not passed to the new foreign agent, there will
be a time-out at the fixed host and activating retransmission of the packet, via mobile
IP, to a new COA.

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Disadvantages:

Here, we will discuss the disadvantages as follows.

1. The behavior of the wireless link –

Snooping TCP does not isolate the behavior of the wireless link or I-TCP. Transmission
errors can spread to the correspondent nodes (CH).

2. A mobile node needs additional mechanisms –

The use of NACK between the foreign agent and the mobile node requires the mobile
node to have additional mechanisms. For arbitrary mobile nodes, this method is no
longer transparent.

3. Encryption at end-to-end –

If such encryption schemes are used end-to-end between the correspondent node and
mobile node, snooping and buffering data can be considered worthless. Snooping TCP
may be used if encryption is used above the transport layer (e.g. SSL/TLS).

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