Subject: Minutes Submittal

From: [email-masked] (Joseph P. Macker)
Date: Wed, 10 Jul 1996 11:50:09 -0400

Here's are the revised submitted minutes based upon Dave's feedback.
This is probably it on revisions, unless there is a serious problem.  I'll
be busy tomorrow and Friday is the deadline.

Dave suggests correct Eng..oops (Latin) is ad hoc not ad-hoc.  I agree.
I now suggest the group "respice finem".  Quo vadis?
-joe
------------------------------
Reported by  Joe Macker, Naval Research Laboratory

Minutes of the Mobile Ad Hoc Networking (MANet) BOF

Introduction: Steve Batsell, Oak Ridge National Laboratory

A proposed charter for the Mobile Ad Hoc Networking WG was introduced.  The
definition of a "mobile ad hoc network" was discussed.

There was general consensus within the group to simplify the goals spelled
out within the charter.  A decision was made to focus on the unicast,
mobile ad hoc routing problem initially and to view Quality of Service
(QoS) and multicast support as potential longer term goals

Experience using OSPF in a bandwidth-constrained environment: Jose Ucles, MITRE

A number of Army simulations of OSPF were presented for a proposed, large
scale, military wireless network.  The simulation results demonstrated the
difficulty of using a link-state algorithm in a constrained-bandwidth
scenario.  Simulation results were not shown for a mobile topology as
system capacity had already been depleted in the case of a static topology.

IBM Ad Hoc Routing Protocol: Charlie Perkins, IBM

An ad hoc routing protocol approach was briefly outlined.  The protocol
uses an on-demand, time-stamped distance vector algorithm which avoids the
well known "counting to infinity" problem. Routes are cached and
timestamped on demand.  Source lists which use these routes are also
cached. Flooding can be used as a bruteforce method to collect routing
information when necessary.

Dynamic Source Routing: Dave Johnson, CMU

A dynamic source routing protocol overview was presented.  A controlled
flooding mechanism is used to discover routes only when needed and to
recover from route failure.  The protocol's objective is to maintain a
cache of source routes either needed by a given source or gleened from
passing packets discovering routes for other sources.  This allows for a
very simple and straightforward approach to mobile routing.

UMD Mobile Routing Protocol: M. Scott Corson, UMD

A mobile routing protocol which uses controlled flooding to build routes on
demand and a link reversal technique to maintain routes was discussed.
Using link reversals, the protocol allows for efficient, coordinated
healing of routes throughout the network when localized failures and/or
topology changes occur.  It was conjectured that as the number of sources
sending to a given destination increases, this approach has advantages over
dynamic source routing. A proposal was made for the development of a
"hybrid" protocol--essentially a synthesis of the link reversal and dynamic
source routing protocols--as they are compatible, yet complimentary
approaches in terms of their regions of applicability.  The proposal was
for a destination to dynamically determine the number of sources sending to
it and to switch between dynamic source and link reversal routing
techniques as necessary.

Open discussion:

Concerns were raised about a lack of shortest-path routing support in the
link reversal approach.  In response to this, the potential congestion
enhancing property of shortest-path routing in bandwidth constrained
networks was discussed.   Further, the benefit of using less optimal
routing and potentially multipath routing to improve distributed network
loading and produce timely routes in a rapidly changing topology was
discussed. Also, it was mentioned that approximate shortest-path routing
could be added to the link reversal algorithm with little additional
overhead and complexity cost.

There was further discussion on the readiness of this technology for
implementation.  While long term research issues remain in many areas, the
three protocol proposers agreed that an initial effort in the unicast
routing area was ready for engineering and implementation.

Final discussions involved revising the present charter.  There was group
agreement that the main focus of the effort be placed in the area of mobile
unicast routing.  There was confidence that this was ready for
implementation.  In addition, it was decided that the proposed charter and
milestones be revised and resubmitted.