Subject: LUNAR software released

From: Christian Tschudin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 6 Dec 2001 16:43:20 +0100 (MET)

LUNAR - Lightweight Underlay Network Ad hoc Routing

The LUNAR software for Linux 2.4.x was released today. Full source
code (GPL) is available at

  http://www.docs.uu.se/docs/research/projects/selnet/lunar/

Feedback and comments are appreciated!

LUNAR works by creating an IP subnet illusion, it is simple to
install and robust in its performance.

LUNAR is an exercise in sticking to essential ad hoc functionality
and is based on the following assumptions and design principles:

- There is an ad hoc horizon. With current commodity wireless
  technology it does not make sense to handle more than three hops.

- Keep interaction with IP low. Fooling IP about the ad hoc reality
  with an underlay enables us to keep the route tables untouched.
  Also, it easily enables us to operate multiple ad hoc routing clouds
  in parallel.

- Keep implementation complexity low. Adopt a remote state patching
  approach for the implementation and restrict yourself to protocols
  that fit into this scheme.

- More specifically, only work with explicit remote commands and
  avoid any piggy backing and implicit inference on network state.
  Also, avoid any autonomous actions by transit nodes and let the
  end nodes control the game.

The result is a bare-boned on-demand route discovery protocol with
broadcast dampening. LUNAR sits below IP and traps ARP solicit requests
and rewrites them to a set of XRP commands (eXtensible Resolution
Protocol), resulting in tunnels being punched through the ad hoc
network. See the SelNet paper on the WEB page for more details.

Installation is simple: no kernel modifications required, a command
line of the form
  ./lunar 192.168.42.123
turns your mobile terminal into node 123 of network 192.168.42.0

An Internet Draft on the LUNAR protocols and its protocol engine
approach is in preparation.

<[email-masked]> Christian Tschudin, Uppsala University
<[email-masked]> Richard Gold, FhG FOKUS, Berlin

---
Christian Tschudin, Uppsala University, IT Dept., Box 325
S-75105 Uppsala, Sweden. http://www.docs.uu.se/~tschudin/