Weak duplicate address detection in mobile ad hoc networks

Auto-configuration is a desirable goal in implementing mobile ad hoc networks. Specifically, automated dynamic assignment (without manual intervention) of IP addresses is desirable. In traditional networks, such dynamic address assignment is often performed using the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP). Implementing DHCP, however, requires access to a DHCP server. In mobile ad hoc networks, it is difficult to guarantee access to a DHCP server, since ad hoc networks can become partitioned due to host mobility. Therefore, alternative mechanisms must be employed. One plausible approach is to allow a node to pick a tentative address randomly (or using some locally available information), and then use a "duplicate address detection" (DAD) procedure to detect duplicate addresses. The previously proposed DAD procedures make use of timeouts and do not always perform correctly in presence of partitions. In networks where message delays cannot be bounded, use of timeouts can lead to unreliability. Therefore, we propose an alternative approach (which can be used in conjunction with previously proposed schemes). We refer to the proposed approach as "weak" duplicate address detection. The goal of weak DAD is to prevent a packet from being routed to the "wrong" destination node, even if two nodes in the network happen to have chosen the same IP address. We also propose an enhanced version of the weak DAD scheme, which removes a potential shortcoming of the weak DAD approach.