2. Table Driven Routing Protocols

2.1 Dynamic Destination-Sequenced Distance-Vector Routing Protocol

Every mobile station maintains a routing table that lists all available destinations, the number of hops to reach the destination and the sequence number assigned by the destination node. The sequence number is used to distinguish stale routes from new ones and thus avoid the formation of loops. The stations periodically transmit their routing tables to their immediate neighbors. A station also transmits its routing table if a significant change has occurred in its table from the last update sent. So, the update is both time-driven and event-driven. The routing table updates can be sent in two ways:- a "full dump" or an incremental update. A full dump sends the full routing table to the neighbors and could span many packets whereas in an incremental update only those entries from the routing table are sent that has a metric change since the last update and it must fit in a packet. If there is space in the incremental update packet then those entries may be included whose sequence number has changed. When the network is relatively stable, incremental updates are sent to avoid extra traffic and full dump are relatively infrequent. In a fast-changing network, incremental packets can grow big so full dumps will be more frequent. Each route update packet, in addition to the routing table information, also contains a unique sequence number assigned by the transmitter. The route labeled with the highest (i.e. most recent) sequence number is used. If two routes have the same sequence number then the route with the best metric (i.e. shortest route) is used. Based on the past history, the stations estimate the settling time of routes. The stations delay the transmission of a routing update by settling time so as to eliminate those updates that would occur if a better route were found very soon.

2.2 The Wireless Routing Protocol (WRP)

The Distance table of a node x contains the distance of each destination node y via each neighbor z of x. It also contains the downstream neighbor of z through which this path is realized. The Routing table of node x contains the distance of each destination node y from node x, the predecessor and the successor of node x on this path. It also contains a tag to identify if the entry is a simple path, a loop or invalid. Storing predecessor and successor in the table is beneficial in detecting loops and avoiding counting-to-infinity problems. The Link-Cost table contains cost of link to each neighbor of the node and the number of timeouts since an error-free message was received from that neighbor. The Message Retransmission list (MRL) contains information to let a node know which of its neighbor has not acknowledged its update message and to retransmit update message to that neighbor.

Node exchange routing tables with their neighbors using update messages periodically as well as on link changes. The nodes present on the response list of update message (formed using MRL) are required to acknowledge the receipt of update message. If there is no change in routing table since last update, the node is required to send an idle Hello message to ensure connectivity. On receiving an update message, the node modifies its distance table and looks for better paths using new information. Any new path so found is relayed back to the original nodes so that they can update their tables. The node also updates its routing table if the new path is better than the existing path. On receiving an ACK, the mode updates its MRL. A unique feature of this algorithm is that it checks the consistency of all its neighbors every time it detects a change in link of any of its neighbors. Consistency check in this manner helps eliminate looping situations in a better way and also has fast convergence.