MOBILE COMPUTING

ASSIGNMENT (UNIT-4)
Short Answer Questions

1. What is the need for ad-hoc network.

→ Ad hoc network is wireless LAN.

→ Devices communicate with each other directly instead of relying on a base station or access
points as in wireless LANs for data transfer co-ordination.
→ Each device participates in routing activity, by determining the route using the routing
algorithm and forwarding data to other devices via this route.

2. Explain the concept of reverse tunneling.

Reverse Tunneling in Mobile IP

→ It is a technique used to maintain connectivity between a Mobile Node (MN) and its Home
Agent (HA).

→ MN can send data packets to Corresponding Node (CN) through its HA.
→ But if MN is currently present on a Foreign Network (FN), i.e., not on its fixed IP address,
HA may not be able to reach MN directly.
→ With Reverse Tunneling, MN initiates a tunnel to its HA through which packets from MN
are encapsulated and sent to HA. HA then forwards them to (CN).
3. Compare MANET and VANETS?
MANET VANET

Mobile Ad-hoc Network Vehicular Ad-hoc Network

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 It consists of a number of mobile devices that It is similar to MANET.
are connected together to form a network, Vehicles can communicate with each other as
without any support from an existing internet well as roadside base station, which are located
infrastructure or any other fixed network at critical points of the road.
station.

Production cost of MANET is cheaper than in Much Expensive.

VANET
Low mobility makes it difficult to locate a High Mobility makes it easy to locate a mobile
mobile subscriber’s point. subscriber’s point is easy.

Change in network topology orientation is Frequent and very fast change of network
slow. topology,

Node lifetime depends on power resources. Node lifetime depends on lifetime vehicle.

Medium reliability. High reliability

Applications
1. Military operations Applications

2. Emergency response 1. Intelligent Transportation Systems

3. Conferences and events 2. Navigation and Location based

services 3. Entertainment and
4. Rural and remote areas infotainment services
5. Healthcare
4. What is Tunnelling and Encapsulation.

A tunnel establishes a virtual pipe for data packets between a tunnel entry and a tunnel endpoint.
Packets entering a tunnel are forwarded inside the tunnel and leave the tunnel unchanged.
Tunneling, i.e., sending a packet through a tunnel, is achieved by using encapsulation.
Encapsulation is the mechanism of taking a packet consisting of packet header and data and
putting it into the data part of a new packet.

Decapsulation is taking a packet out of the data part of another packet.

Encapsulation and decapsulation are the operations typically performed when a packet is
transferred from a higher protocol layer to a lower layer or from a lower to a higher layer
respectively.

5. List the various applications of the Mobile Ad-hoc network.

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 1. Military Operations- MANETs can be used for secure communication and coordination
between soldiers in the field.
2. Emergency Response- MANETs can be set up quickly in disaster or emergency situations
to provide communication networks for rescue and relief operations.
3. Conferences and Event- MANETs can be used to provide temporary network connectivity
for attendees at conferences, trade shows, and other events.
4. Rural and Remote Areas- MANETs can be used to provide connectivity in rural and remote
areas where traditional communication infrastructure is scarce.
6. What is Mobile IP.

→ Mobile IP is a standard to enable mobile communication.

→ When a user moves locations, the IP address of his device remains the same so even if he

has moved, the device will be connected to the network. Components in Mobile IP

1. Mobile Node (MN)- hand-held communication device that the user carries (e.g. phone)
2. Correspondent Node (CN)- device on the internet communicating to the MN.
3. Home Network (HN) - network to which the MN was registered at.
4. Home Agent (HA)- router in HN to which MN was originally connected.
5. Foreign Network (FN)- current network to which MN is visiting.
6. Foreign Agent (FA)- router in FN to which MN is currently connected. Packets from the
HA are sent to the FA which delivers them to MN.
7. Care-of Address (COA)- temporary address used by MN while it is away from its HN.
8. Foreign agent COA- IP address of the FA, forwards packets to MN & provides security.
9. Co-located COA- MN acquires temporary IP address that acts as its co-location.

How are Data Packets delivered?

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 Fig. Packet delivery to and from MN

1. Discovery- Finding FA of MN. It is done in 2 ways-

a. Agent Advertising- FA and HA periodically advertise COA to indicate presence of MN.

A flag will be sent to indicate whether it is FA/HA.
b. Agent Solicitation- sent by MN when it does not receive any COA

2. Registration

→ The main purpose of the registration is to inform HA of the current location for correct
forwarding of packets. Registration van be done in 2 ways-

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 1. COA is at the FA- MN sends its registration request containing the COA to the FA which is
forwarding the request to the HA. Mobility Binding Table- consists of home IP location of
MN, current location and registration for lifetime.
2. COA is co-located- MN may send the request directly to the HA and vice versa.

3. Tunneling

→ A tunnel establishes a virtual pipe for the packets available between a tunnel entry and an
endpoint.
→ Tunneling is the process of sending a packet via a tunnel and it is achieved by a mechanism
called encapsulation.
→ Whenever HA receives a packet from CN, it encapsulates the packet with source address as
home address and destination as COA.
→ A data packet consists of data and its header. This data packet is encapsulated along with its
header into a new encapsulated data packet which also has its header.

→ Data sent from the sender is encapsulated and sent to the reciever through the tunnel.
→ On the receiver's side, the receiver receives the encapsulated data packet, decapsulates it and
obtains the original data.
→ Encapsulation and decapsulation takes place when packet is transferred from higher to lower
protocol layer to secure data and address of receiver.

7. Write the role played by DHCP in mobility.

→ When a device moves from one network to another, its IP address needs to be updated to
ensure it can communicate with other devices on the new network.
→ DHCP enables this by automatically assigning a new IP address to the device when it
connects to a new network.
→ DHCP plays a critical role in supporting mobility in networks by automatically assigning IP
addresses and providing other configuration information to devices as they move between
networks, which ensures ongoing communication without interruption.

8. Explain design goals of Mobile IP.

1. It should avoid solutions that require mobile nodes to use multiple addresses.
2. It should transparently deal with the problems of mobile users.
3. Frequency and size of required routing updates should be small.

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 4. Simple implementation of software.

9. What is MANET? What are the characteristics of MANETS? MANET (Mobile Ad-hoc

Network)

→ A MANET is an autonomous collection of mobile users that communicate over relatively

bandwidth constrained wireless links.
→ The main challenge for the MANET is to equip each device to continuously maintain the

information required to properly route traffic. Characteristics

1. Dynamic Topologies- Network topology which is typically multihop may change randomly
and rapidly with time, it can form unidirectional or bi-directional links.
2. Bandwidth constrained, variable capacity links- Wireless links usually have lower
reliability, efficiency, stability, and capacity as compared to a wired network.
3. Autonomous Behavior- Each node can act as a host and router.
4. Energy Constrained Operation- As some or all the nodes rely on batteries, they have less
memory, power, and lightweight features.
5. 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.

Long Answer Questions

1. Discuss the different Protocols in MANETS.

MANET Routing Protocols

1. Proactive routing protocols- DSDV, GSR

2. Reactive routing protocols- DSR, AODV
3. Hybrid routing protocols- ZRP

1. Pro-active routing protocols

→ They are also called table-driven Routing Protocols.

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 → Route is determined in advance.
→ Each mobile node maintains a separate routing table which contains the information of the
routes to all the possible destination mobile nodes.
→ These routing tables are updated periodically as the network topology changes. →
Advantages- no route latency and Quality of Service (QoS) is guaranteed.

Destination Sequenced Distance Vector Routing Protocol (DSDV)

→ It is a type of proactive routing protocol.

→ Each node has its own table consisting of all routing information- destination ID, next node,
distance (no. of hops), and sequence no.
→ Updates are done in 2 ways- Full dump- complete routing table is sent to the next hop and
Incremental update- only the recent changes made are sent to the next hop.
Routing table of N1 Routing Table of N2

Destination Next Distance Seq Destination Next node Distance Seq no.
node node no. node
N2 N2 1 14 N3 N3 1 18
N3 N2 2 18
Table maintenance in DSDV

→ Each node receives the most recent sequence no. from the other nodes and updates its own
table.

→ A node looks at its own routing table to determine the shortest path to reach the destination.
→ Each node constructs another routing table based on the shortest path information.
→ The new routing table will be broadcast to its neighbor nodes which compare and update
their own routing tables.

2. Reactive routing protocols

→ They are also called On-demand routing protocol.

→ Route is determined only when needed.
→ Less overhead.
→ Good scalability
→ High route latency

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a. Dynamic Source Routing protocol (DSR)

→ It is a reactive/on-demand routing protocol.

→ Route is discovered between source and destination only when required.
→ Operation is based on Source Routing- sender/source know s the complete path.
→ So intermediate nodes do not require to maintain any information.
→ Less overhead in network due to less exchange of messages between the nodes. → It consists
of two major phases-Route Discovery and Route Maintenance.
1. Route Discovery
→ Packet is sent by RREQ (Route Request Packet) which has the Source node ID and
Destination node ID.

→ SID and DID are broadcast to all other nodes.

→ When RREQ is sent, RREP (Route Reply message) is replied as the destination sends the
complete path to the source.

2. Route Maintenance
→ This phase performs the maintenance work of the route as the topology in the mobile adhoc
network is dynamic in nature
→ There are many cases of link breakage resulting in network failure between the mobile nodes.
It consists of-
1. RERR (Route Error)- an error message is sent if a message goes the wrong way.
2. Route Cache- It stores the path in cache.

b. Ad-Hoc On Demand Vector Routing protocol (AODV)

→ It is a reactive routing protocol.

→ It is an extension of dynamic source routing protocol (DSR).
→ It helps to remove the disadvantage of dynamic source routing protocol.
→ Unlike DSR, in AODV the source nodes do not know the complete path, instead each node
maintains its own route cache.

→ Each node only knows its previous and next path information. 2 phases are-

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 1. Route Discovery- RREQ contains source node id, destination node id, recent sequence no.,
hop count, broadcast id.
2. Route Maintenance- stores the path in the routing table.

3. Hybrid Routing protocol

→ It is a combination of proactive and reactive routing protocols.

→ If nodes are close by, proactive routing is done.
→ If nodes are far, reactive routing is done. Zone
Routing Protocol (ZRP)

→ The whole network is divided into different zones and then the position of source and
destination mobile node is observed.
→ Proactive routing- If the source and destination nodes are present in the same zone. →
reactive routing- If the source and destination nodes are present in different zones.

Example of DSR and AODV protocols

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2. Explain about tunnelling and encapsulation and write about different types of encapsulations.
(same as 6th SAQ)

Types of Encapsulation protocols 1. IP-in-IP Encapsulation

→ Suppose an IPv6 packet is to be transmitted but the router supports only IPv4.
→ With the use of IP-in-IP Encapsulation, we can add a new packet within the existing one so
that the information is passed efficiently.
→ The idea is to wrap the IPv6 packet inside another IPv4 packet keeping the IPv6 packet
intact.
→ This is done by adding a new IP 20-byte header wherein there is a 32-bit IP address for source
and destination.

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 Header Data ------------⟶ Header Header Data
Encapsulation
2. Minimal Encapsulation
A minimal forwarding header is defined for datagrams which are not fragmented prior to
encapsulation. To encapsulate an IP datagram using minimal encapsulation, the minimal
forwarding header is inserted into the datagram.

IP Header Modified IP Header

⟶
IP Payload Minimal Forwarding Header

3. Generic Routing Encapsulation IP Payload

→ In this method, IP packets in a GRE header hide the original IP packet.

→ A new header named delivery header is added above the GRE header which contains the
new source and destination address.
→ GRE header act as a new IP header with a Delivery header containing a new source and
destination address.

→ Only routers between which GRE is configured can decrypt-encrypt the GRE header.
→ The original IP packet enters a router, travels in encrypted form, and emerges out of another GRE-
configured router as the original IP packet as they have traveled through a tunnel.

→ Hence, this process is called GRE tunneling.

3. Differentiate DSDV routing with AODV Protocol. (same as 1st LAQ)

4. Why is DHCP used? Explain in detail.

Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP)

→ It is based on Bootstrap protocol.

→ DHCP is a network management protocol used to dynamically assign an IP address to many
devices/nodes on a network so they can communicate using Internet Protocol (IP).
→ If a new node is connected to the network, DHCP provides- DNS Server, subnet mask,
Domain name and IP address.
→ DHCP client and server work together to handle the roaming status of a device and assign a
new IP address to the moving devices.

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 → In a pool, several IP addresses are available. DHCP server takes one of them and assigns it
to the roaming device (DHCP client).
→ Importance in Mobile Computing- Mobility as it provides a temporary address whenever a
host moves from one network to another.
→ There are 3 DHCP IP address allocation mechanisms- 1.
Automatic- assigns permanent IP address
2. Dynamically- assign IP address for specified period of time
3. Manual- IP address is assigned by network admin

5. Explain about the working of Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol.

Message Detail

Discover Sent by DHCP client to discover a DHCP server.

Offer Sent by DHCP server to lease unique IP address and other

parameters needed to client.

Request Sent by DHCP client asking server to lease parameters listed in

Offer message.

Acknowledgement Sent by DHCP server to assign IP address, mask, default router &
DNS server address to client.
→ DHCP client sends ‘Discover’ request to DHCP server to know if there is an IP address
available for its configuration.
→ If IP address is available in the pool for the given configuration, the Server sends the

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 ‘Offer’ message to client to lese the unique IP address and other required parameters. → If
available, the client makes a ‘Request’ to the server to assign the IP address for the
configuration.

→ The server will either Accept/Reject the request.

→ If accepted, the server sends an ‘Acknowledgement’ message to the client and the client is
allowed to use the IP address for some particular time.

→ After use, the client will have to ‘Release’ the IP address.

6. Discuss the challenges and issues in implementing MANETS. Issues in MANETs

1. Routing- Because of multi hop routing no default route is available. Every node acts as a
router and forwards each other’s packets to enable information sharing between mobile
nodes.
2. Security- A wireless link is much more vulnerable than a wired link. The user can insert
spurious information into routing packets and cause routing loops, long time-outs and
advertisements of false or old routing table updates.
3. Quality of Service (QoS) is a difficult task for the developers, because the topology of an
ad hoc network will constantly change. Challenges in MANETs

1. The main challenge of MANETs is their vulnerability to security attacks and how to operate
securely and efficiently while preserving its own resources.
2. Host is no longer an end system - can also be an acting intermediate system
3. Changing the network topology over time
4. Potentially frequent network partitions
5. Limited power capacity
6. Limited wireless bandwidth
7. Presence of varying channel quality
8. No centralized entity – distributed

7. Explain the DSDV routing protocol with example. (1st LAQ)

8. What is the difference between VANETS and MANETS. (same as 3rd SAQ)

9. Discuss any two-topology based routing protocol in MANETS. AODV & DSR .

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