Continuous TCP Connection to the Internet on Fast-changing Mobile Ad-hoc Network

Abstract

As more and more sensors are being used in all industries, especially the Internet of Things, Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANET) are also becoming more popular as good ways to organize wireless devices in the same area. Since devices in MANET can be highly mobile, wireless connection to other networks might be very unstable. There are a set of protocols that allows nodes in a MANET to organize themselves by exchanging routing information with other nodes, such as Optimized Link State Routing Protocol (OLSR), Ad hoc On-demand Distance Vector (AODV), and Dynamic Source Routing (DSR). When connecting to another network, however, there lacks an effective way to maintain a stable connection to another network due to the high mobility of nodes and thus causing problems with TCP connections to the destination network. This thesis provides a design that maintains a stable TCP connection to the Internet when the network environment changes in MANET by letting nodes send out messages and inform the Internet router the route to the MANET. We conducted a set of experiments that evaluate the time taken to recover from a network change and the overhead of the design. The result shows that this design can help MANET recover from a network change in a short time and with minimum overhead.