Performance analysis of SNMP in OLSRv2-routed MANETs

Mobile Ad Hoc NETworks (MANETs) are generally thought of as infrastructure-less and largely “un-managed”. Yet, while the network may be un-managed, monitoring performance and setting configuration parameters post-deployment, remains important in order to ensure proper “tuning” and maintenance of a MANET. While SNMP is sometimes considered too “heavy” for MANETs, it remains the predominant management and monitoring protocol in the Internet. This paper evaluates SNMP in an OLSRv2-routed MANET, with the purpose of investigating performance metrics. In order to address concerns both regarding SNMP being “heavy”, as well as regarding the burden of performance reports obtained via SNMP polling in MANETs, the utility of performance reporting extensions to the DISMAN capabilities set is studied. The obtained results show that a significant benefit can be obtained by deploying these performance reporting extensions in an SNMP managed MANET.