Internet connectivity for mobile ad hoc networks: solutions and challenges

The interconnection of mobile ad hoc networks to fixed IP networks is one of the topics receiving more attention within the MANET working group of the IETF as well as in many research projects funded by the European Union. Several solutions have recently been proposed, but at this time it is unclear which ones offer the best performance compared to the others. In addition to introducing the main challenges and design options that need to be considered, we perform a simulation-based evaluation aiming at providing some insight on the performance of these approaches. These simulation results have proven themselves valuable by showing that some of the most eye-catching features of the proposed approaches have practical performance issues which need to be enhanced.