UNIT - 4

MOBILE AGENTS AND ROUTING ALGORITHMS

THIS IS NOT THE SUBSTITUTE OF TEXT BOOK. PLEASE FOLLOW YOUR TEXT BOOK.
Mobile Agents:
In Mobile Computing, Mobile Agents are the composition of computer software
and data that can autonomously move from one computer to another computer
and continue its execution on the destination computer.
In other words, you can say that An Mobile Agent is an autonomous program
that is capable of moving from host to host in a network and interact with
resources and other agents. In this process, the chance of data loss is scarce
because the state of the running program is saved and then transported to the
new host. It allows the program to continue execution from where it left off
before migration. The most significant advantage of mobile agents is the
possibility of moving complex processing functions to the location where you
have enormous amounts of data and that have to be processed. Mobile Agents
are also called as transportable agents. They are classified into two types:

• Mobile Agents with pre-defined path: They have a static migration path.
• Mobile Agents with undefined path i.e., Roamer: They have dynamic
migration paths. The mobile agents choose their path according to the
present network condition.

Features of Mobile Agents:

The mobile agents are autonomous with intelligence, social ability, learning, and
the most important feature is their mobility. They are independent in nature,
self-driven and do not require a corresponding node for communication. They
can work efficiently even after the user gets disconnected from the network.

• Intelligence: Mobile Agents are capable of learning and searching for

knowledge about their domain. That's why they are called intelligent
agents because they possess a degree of domain knowledge. They can also
transport their state from one environment to another without disturbing
the previous holding data and be capable of performing appropriately in
the new environment.

• Autonomous: The Mobile Agents are Autonomous. It means the agents

are not only motivated by the outside actions initiated by the users or
system but also they have internal events that decided their performance
and behaviour. The mobile agents can also take an autonomous decision
while selecting a node.

Dr. Qaim Mehdi Rizvi

IMRT, Lucknow
 • Mobility: Mobile Agents contain some degree of mobility. The agent is not
limited to its home node only. They can migrate from one node to another
and can carry out tasks along with them. This feature distributes the
processing and balancing of the load. Another benefit of this capability is
that when the user goes offline, the agents will still keep functioning.

• Communicative: Mobile Agents can communicate effectively with other

agents, users and systems. The mobile agents use a communication
language for inter-agent communication.

Advantages of Mobile Agents: The following are some advantages of mobile

agents over conventional agents:

• Mobile Agents are autonomous and self-driven in nature.

• They are maintenance-friendly or easily maintainable.
• They are Fault-tolerant. It means they are able to operate without an
active connection between client and server.
• They reduce the compilation time.
• They provide less delay in the network.

Disadvantages of Mobile Agents: The following are some disadvantages of

mobile agents:

• The most significant disadvantage of mobile agents is their security. They

are less secured

Security in Mobile Communications:

Providing security services in the mobile computing environment is challenging
because it is more vulnerable for intrusion and eavesdropping. Most of the
existing mobile systems assume the presence of stationary base stations, which
is not quite true in applications. For example, in the tactical military mobile
networks, base stations also move from one network to another network. Our
research direction integrates the ideas from the science and engineering of
security and fault-tolerance.
The objective is to make systems survivable from intentional and unintentional
attacks. We are motivated by the fact that systems will allow access to
information during failures. Same ideas can be applied in a complimentary
approach for making access unavailable to unauthorized users. Through this
presentation, I would like to identify a set of problems in security that can benefit
from the research in reliable distributed systems. The solutions to the fault-

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IMRT, Lucknow
tolerant authentication problem are presented. I will outline a series of
experiments that are in progress in our laboratory at Purdue. The applications
domain for this talk is military systems but the problem and results are applicable
to emergency services during earthquakes, forest fires, and disaster recovery
after terrorist attacks. This research is applicable to multi-media mobile systems
and other public use mobile communication.

Transaction Processing in Mobile Computing Environment:

Transaction processing is of growing importance for mobile computing. Online
Booking Tickets, Flight Reservation, Banking, Electronic Payment, and Booking
Holiday Arrangements are just a few examples for mobile transactions. Previous
research in mobile data management has been focused on the delivery of
information from fixed data servers to mobile clients, considering a scenario
where mobile client hosts replace fixed ones. There exists a number of
applications which fit into this scenario, e.g. accessing a customer database by
a travelling salesman.
However, not all potential application fields for mobile computing correspond to
this scenario. There is a large number of applications imaginable, where a mobile
client host does not replace but accompany the fixed client host.
The goal of our approach is the provision of a support platform for mobile
database access in the industrial pilot lot manufacturing. Nowadays a typical
pattern of the engineers work looks like this: Our engineer gets notified
whenever a problem arises in the manufacturing process, e.g. by phone. Now he
collects related information from product and production databases on the fixed
network.

TRANSACTION PROCESSING IN MOBILE ENVIRONMENT

Therefore, he starts a distributed transaction on the workstation (a fixed host) in

his office. However, the information found may not be sufficient to solve the
problem. So the engineer will typically decide to move to the manufacturing site
to have a close look at the problem and to have a talk with the involved workers.
Dr. Qaim Mehdi Rizvi
IMRT, Lucknow
As a result of this he is able to solve the problem and after returning to the office
adapt the information in the databases and commit the transaction.

Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANETs):

MANET stands for Mobile Ad-hoc Network also called a wireless Ad-hoc network
or Ad-hoc wireless network that usually has a routable networking environment
on top of a Link Layer ad hoc network.. They consist of a set of mobile nodes
connected wirelessly in a self-configured, self-healing network without having a
fixed infrastructure. MANET nodes are free to move randomly as the network
topology changes frequently. Each node behaves as a router as they forward
traffic to other specified nodes in the network.

MOBILE AD-HOC NETWORK OR MANET

They form a highly dynamic autonomous topology with the presence of one or
multiple different transceivers between nodes. The main challenge for the
MANET is to equip each device to continuously maintain the information
required to properly route traffic. MANETs consist of a peer-to-peer, self-
forming, self-healing network MANET’s circa 2000-2015 typically communicate
at radio frequencies (30MHz-5GHz). This can be used in road safety, ranging
from sensors for the environment, home, health, disaster rescue operations,
air/land/navy defence, weapons, robots, etc. Manets have many characteristics
and some of them are as follows:

• Dynamic Topologies: Network topology which is typically multi-hop may

change randomly and rapidly with time, it can form unidirectional or bi-
directional links.

Dr. Qaim Mehdi Rizvi

IMRT, Lucknow
 • Bandwidth constrained, variable capacity links: Wireless links usually
have lower reliability, efficiency, stability, and capacity as compared to a
wired network.
• Autonomous Behaviour: Each node can act as a host and router, which
shows its autonomous behaviour.
• Energy Constrained Operation: As some or all the nodes rely on batteries
or other exhaustible means for their energy. Mobile nodes are
characterized by less memory, power, and lightweight features.
• Limited Security: Wireless networks are more prone to security threats. A
centralized firewall is absent due to the distributed nature of the operation
for security, routing, and host configuration.
• Less Human Intervention: They require minimum human intervention to
configure the network, therefore they are dynamically autonomous in
nature.

Pros and Cons of MANETs: MANETs many advanced features but in other hand
it has some drawbacks also. These are as follows:

• Pros:
o Separation from central network administration.
o Each node can play both the roles i.e. of router and host showing
autonomous nature.
o Self-configuring and self-healing nodes do not require human
intervention.
• Cons:
o Resources are limited due to various constraints like noise,
interference conditions, etc.
o Lack of authorization facilities.
o More prone to attacks due to limited physical security.

Routing Protocols in MANETs:

In Mobile Ad-hoc Network (MANET), nodes do not know the topology of their
network, instead they have to discover it by their own as the topology in the ad-
hoc network is dynamic topology. The basic rules is that a new node whenever
enters into an ad-hoc network, must announce its arrival and presence and
should also listen to similar announcement broadcasts made by other mobile
nodes.
Routing Protocols are the set of defined rules used by the routers to
communicate between source & destination. They do not move the information
to the source to a destination, but only update the routing table that contains

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IMRT, Lucknow
the information. Now, MANETs have many routing protocols but following are
really very useful and we have to go through it.

Global State Routing (GSR):

It is a pro-active/table driven routing protocol. It actually extends the link state
routing of the wired networks. It is based on the Dijkstra’s Routing Algorithm.
Link state routing protocol was not suited for mobile ad-hoc networks because
in it, each node floods the link state routing information directly into the whole
network i.e. Global flooding which may lead to the congestion of control packets
in the network.
Hence, as a solution Global State Routing Protocol or GSR came into the picture.
Global state routing doesn’t flood the link state routing packets globally into the
network. In GSR, each of the mobile node maintains one list and three tables
namely, adjacency list, topology table, next hop table and distance table.

• Distance Table: This table contains the distance of a node from all the
nodes in network.
• Topology Table: This table contains the information of Link state data
along with the sequence number which can be used to determine when
the information is updated last.
• Next Hop Table: Next hop table will contain the information about the
immediate neighbour of a particular node.

These tables are updated on every step and ensures that each node receives
correct information about all the nodes including their distances.

C
B
A
E

GLOBAL STATE ROUTING

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IMRT, Lucknow
Destination Sequenced Distance Vector (DSDV):
Destination Sequenced Distance Vector or DSDV is a hop-by-hop vector routing
protocol requiring each node to periodically broadcast routing updates. This is a
table driven algorithm based on modifications made to the Bellman-Ford routing
mechanism. DSDV was one of the first proactive routing protocols available for
Ad Hoc networks. It was developed by C. Perkins in 1994, 5 years before the
informational RFC of the MANET group. It has not been standardised by any
regulation authorities but is still a reference.
DSDV is a hop-by-hop vector routing protocol requiring each node to periodically
broadcast routing updates. This is a table driven algorithm based on
modifications made to the Bellman-Ford routing mechanism. Each node in the
network maintains a routing table that has entries for each of the destinations
in the network and the number of hops required to reach each of them. Each
entry has a sequence number associated with it that helps in identifying stale
entries. This mechanism allows the protocol to avoid the formation of routing
loops. Each node periodically sends updates tagged throughout the network with
a monotonically increasing even sequence number to advertise its location.

DESTINATION SEQUENCED DISTANCE VECTOR ROUTING

New route broadcasts contain the address of the destination, the number of hops
to reach the destination, the sequence number of the information received
regarding the destination, as well as a new sequence number unique to the
broadcast. The route labelled with the most recent sequence number is always
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IMRT, Lucknow
used. When the neighbours of the transmitting node receive this update, they
recognize that they are one hop away from the source node and include this
information in their distance vectors. Every node stores the “next routing hop”
for every reachable destination in their routing table. The route used is the one
with the highest sequence number i.e. the most recent one. When a neighbour B
of A finds out that A is no longer reachable, it advertises the route to A with an
infinite metric and a sequence number one greater than the latest sequence
number for the route forcing any nodes with B on the path to A, to reset their
routing tables.

Consider the network in the given figure that shows the movement of node N1.
Table 1 is the routing table at node N4 before node N1 moves. Table 2 is the
routing table updated for node N4 after node N1 moved. Routing table updates
in DSDV are distributed by two different types of update packets:

Dr. Qaim Mehdi Rizvi

IMRT, Lucknow
 • Full Dump: This type of update packet contains all the routing information
available at a node. As a consequence, it may require several Network
Protocol Data Units (NPDUs) to be transferred if the routing table is large.
Full dump packets are transmitted infrequently if the node only
experiences occasional movement.
• Incremental Dump: This type of update packet contains only the
information that has changed since the latest full dump was sent out by
the node. Hence, incremental packets only consume a fraction of the
network resources compared to a full dump.

Dynamic Source Routing (DSR):

The Dynamic Source Routing protocol (DSR) is a simple and efficient routing
protocol designed specifically for use in multi-hop wireless ad hoc networks of
mobile nodes.
DSR allows the network to be completely self-organizing and self-configuring,
without the need for any existing network infrastructure or administration. It is
a reactive protocol and all aspects of the protocol operate entirely on-demand
basis. It works on the concept of source routing. Source routing is a routing
technique in which the sender of a packet determines the complete sequence of
nodes through which, the packets are forwarded.
The advantage of source routing is that intermediate nodes do not need to
maintain up to date routing information in order to route the packets they
forward. The protocol is composed of the two main mechanisms of Route
Discovery and Route Maintenance. The following mechanism must be follow to
send data packets to the destination.

• DSR requires each node to maintain a route cache of all known self to
destination pairs. If a node has a packet to send, it attempts to use this
cache to deliver the packet.
• If the destination does not exist in the cache, then a route discovery phase
is initiated to discover a route to destination, by sending a route request.
• This request includes the destination address, source address and a unique
identification number.
• If a route is available from the route – cache, but is not valid any
more, a route maintenance procedure may be initiated.
• A node processes the route request packet only if it has not previously
processes the packet and its address is not present in the route cache.
• A route reply is generated by the destination or by any of the intermediate
nodes when it knows about how to reach the destination.

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IMRT, Lucknow
In the following example, the route discovery procedure is shown where S1 is the
source node and S7 is the destination node.

In this example, the destination S7, gets the request through two paths. It
chooses one path based on the route records in the incoming packet and sends
a reply using the reverse path to the source node. At each hop, the best route
with minimum hop is stored. In this example, it is shown the route record status
ate each hop to reach the destination from the source node. Here, the chosen
route is S1-S2-S4-S5-S7.

• The main advantage is that DSR uses a reactive approach which eliminates
the need to periodically flood the network with table update messages
which are required in a table-driven approach. The intermediate nodes
also utilize the route cache information efficiently to reduce the control
overhead.
• The disadvantage of DSR is that the route maintenance mechanism does
not locally repair a broken down link. The connection setup delay is higher
than in table- driven protocols. Even though the protocol performs well
in static and low-mobility environments, the performance degrades
rapidly with increasing mobility. Also, considerable routing overhead is

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IMRT, Lucknow
 involved due to the source- routing mechanism employed in DSR. This
routing overhead is directly proportional to the path length.

Ad-hoc On-demand Distance Vector Routing (AODV):

This AODV is more generalized and standardized in the field of research and the
most used protocol. Reactive protocols have less overhead than proactive
protocols, but they can respond to network topology changes more slowly. Since
AODV is a reactive (or on-demand) MANET routing protocol, it only keeps routes
that have a demand in the network. For reaching destinations, AODV holds a
routing table with the next hop. If no packets are sent on a path, they will time
out after a while. It only consists of information about its neighbour nodes so
retransferring the data frames might take more time. It consists of 3 types of
routing messages as follows:

• RREQ(Route Request):
A node, Initiates to send/transmit a packet but doesn’t know how to get
there, it sends an RREQ multicast message to start the route discovery
process. Neighbouring nodes keep track of where the message originated
and move it on to their neighbours before it reaches the destination node.

• RREP(Route Reply):
The destination node responds with an RREP, which returns to the source
through the path taken by the RREQ. As the RREP returns to the source,
forward routes are formed in the intermediate nodes. If an intermediate
node knows the path to the destination, it may send an RREP in response
to a received RREQ, allowing nodes to enter an established route.
Communication between the source and the destination will begin once
the RREP arrives at the source and the route is established.

• REER(Route Error):
AODV typically has less overhead as a reactive protocol (less route
maintenance messages) than proactive. In the event of the connection
interruption that the path no longer functions, i.e. messages cannot be
sent, a RERR message is sent through a node detecting the link
interruption. The message is re-cast by other nodes. The RERR message
shows the unattainable destination. Message receiving nodes inactivates
the route.

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IMRT, Lucknow
 AD-HOC ON-DEMAND DISTANCE VECTOR ROUTING

The AODV protocol builds routes between nodes only if they are requested
by source nodes. AODV is therefore considered an on-demand algorithm
and does not create any extra traffic for communication along links. The
routes are maintained as long as they are required by the sources. They
also form trees to connect multicast group members. AODV makes use of
sequence numbers to ensure route freshness. They are self-starting and
loop-free besides scaling to numerous mobile nodes.
In AODV, networks are silent until connections are established. Network
nodes that need connections broadcast a request for connection. The
remaining AODV nodes forward the message and record the node that
requested a connection. Thus, they create a series of temporary routes
back to the requesting node.
A node that receives such messages and holds a route to a desired node
sends a backward message through temporary routes to the requesting
node. The node that initiated the request uses the route containing the
least number of hops through other nodes. The entries that are not used
in routing tables are recycled after some time. If a link fails, the routing
error is passed back to the transmitting node and the process is repeated.

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IMRT, Lucknow
• Conclusion:
Routing and protocol such that Manets AODV Reactive Routing Protocol
plays an important in networking. Here, we are able to learn the overview
part, and it’s functioning and also, we have understood the 3 types of
routing messages. Now, you have enough knowledge to understand the
Manets AODV Reactive Routing Protocol. If you want to learn more, then
you can follow the references for the same.

b*a

Dr. Qaim Mehdi Rizvi

IMRT, Lucknow