Subject: [manet] LAN based scenario for MANETS... Am I barking up the wrong tree here?

From: William Conroy <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 05:52:33 +0000

Good day all, my name is William Conroy, and I am on an internship for a
Japanese company. Recently I have become involved in a Power Line
Communications project.

First question is a definition clearup question.... What is the difference
between a Mesh network and a MANET?

Our company hopes to produce a power line ´repeater´, a device that allows
the 100m limitation on power line communication (due to signal attenuation)
to be overcome, and thus allow installation at very large sites to no longer
be an issue...

Please bear with me here, as my understanding of this subject area is very
thin... They basically want to make a device that is a very small PC, with
Linux installed that they can plug into the power system at sporadic
intervals around the site, envision something that looks like a mobile phone
charger. However, there is reported problems with the routing in this
scenario... My supervisor has been advised by his supervisor that this
problem is similar to that of adhoc networks, and that AODV would prove to
be a good algorithm to provide the routing services on this device...

Now I know very little about MANETS and AODV, but common sense, and the
small amount of research I´ve done in the last few days would suggest to me
that MANETS are used:

- When there is little or no infrastructure available.... Master/Slave
relationships would have to rapidly and dynamically reconfigure as the
network changed over time
- The reliability of connections is low, in that signals get lost, devices
get turned on and off etc....
- Mobility of devices is high to very high, people move round with these
things...

Under these conditions I can understand why TCP/IP networking is wholly
inappropriate, and the development of new techniques was made.... However I
look at my scenario, that of power line communication over a large site, and
although there are some similarities, its pretty different:

- Reliability of connections is also low, due to the unreliability of power
lines for communication, devices being unplugged from the network (e.g. I
need to charge my mobile, I´ll just unplug this repeater for a bit).
However, I´d say that this problem is magnitudes smaller than the
unreliability issues with mobile connections....
- Medium infrastructure available. As mentioned above, there is the
possibility that the infrastructure would have to change, if someone
moved/unplugged a repeater, or a repeater stopped working... But again, this
is nowhere near as rapid or as dynamic as a mobile device network
- Theres little/no mobility of devices, unless someone lugs their computer/a
repeater to another room... Again a problem magnitudes smaller than that of
a mobile network....

So what I´m asking is, is my supervisor barking up the wrong tree, or am I
missing something about this scenario? Can anyone point me towards any
research involving AODV or MANETS for LAN use? I personally am failing to
see why the vanilla TCP/IP implementation cant cope with this scenario...

Some direction in this would be very much appreciated!

Many thanks for your time and patience

William Conroy
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