E-D2HCP: enhanced distributed dynamic host configuration protocol

Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) consist of mobile nodes equipped with wireless devices. They do not need any kind of pre-existent infrastructure and are about self-managed networks. MANETs enable communication between mobile nodes without direct links and across multihop paths. To ensure correct operation of the routing protocols, MANETs, have to assign unique IP addresses to the MANET devices. Furthermore, the address assignment is an important issue when dealing with MANET networks because the traditional approaches are not applicable without some changes, having to provide new protocols for the address auto-configuration. These schemes must take into account the properties of MANETs such as dynamic topology, limited resources or lack of infrastructure. In this paper, we propose a stateful scheme for dynamic allocation of IP addresses in MANETs entitled Extended Distributed Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol because it is based on a previous piece of work (D2CHP). This extension includes the network merging not covered by its predecessor. Simulation results show that the new protocol also improves D2HCP functionality in areas such as fault tolerance, concurrency and latency.