Naming services and directory services of mobile Ad Hoc networks

Naming services and Directory services are basic services of Mobile Ad Hoc Networks. While these services work well on the fixed Internet, they represent a centralized approach which is not suitable for MANET. Since MANET is a pure distributed network, it has no authority or centralized server. Furthermore, MANET is dynamic and often exhibits non-deterministic user behavior. A distributed name assignment mechanism was proposed. It is a protocol named NetNeighbor which implements the name auto-configuration mechanism and provides name services and directory services for mobile hosts in MANET. Simulation results show that the probability of naming conflicts is zero when the system is stable, which effectively avoids the influence on data communications by the name conflict. Local information stored in every node arrives at about 98% in average, which accurately reflects the whole network overview and improves the correctness of the directory services.