A survey and taxonomy of name systems in mobile ad hoc networks

Name systems are one of the main components of each network that delivers services such as name registration and name resolution for network users and applications. On the Internet, DNS is used to provide easy communications and automatic name to address translations, but because of special characteristics of mobile ad hoc networks it cannot be used on the MANETs. Therefore, various special purpose solutions have been designed to provide name services in different types of MANETs. In this paper, we present taxonomy of MANET name systems based on their architecture and specify the operations that each category of name systems should support. We discuss about the properties and capabilities of each kind of name systems and compare the overheads of each scheme. This survey clarifies the advantages and disadvantages of each name system and is of high importance to understand the weakness of existing name systems and designing effective and complete name systems. Finally, we conclude with open research issues. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.