Subject: [manet] Draft MANET Problem Statement and Direction

From: Joe Macker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 May 2004 11:30:58 -0400

ALL:

This discussion is a little overdue but we have run this draft outline past the Routing ADs and are posting it here for the WG to kick around. Within the next 2 weeks we would like to have a reasonable WG framework to proceed with. I don't think there are many surprises here as the WG has been openly discussing the next steps for awhile.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DRAFT MANET PROBLEM STATEMENT AND DIRECTION 
(REALLY A CHARTER UPDATE)

The purpose of the MANET working group is to standardize IP routing protocol functionality suitable for wireless routing application within both static and dynamic topologies. The fundamental problem issues are that wireless link interfaces have some unique routing interface characteristics and that node topologies within a wireless routing region may experience increased dynamics, due to motion or other factors. The continued proliferation of a wide variety of wireless device technologies and embedded network devices is opening up new wireless networking challenges.  MANET specifications fundamentally provide improved operational IP routing performance for dynamic, wireless routing regions.  Approaches are intended to be relatively lightweight in nature and suitable for heterogeneous adaptation across multiple hardware and wireless environments.

While MANET routing areas may operate in isolation from a larger connected Internet, a primary focus of the MANET WG is to address use as a routing technology extension at the edges of an IP infrastructure. The deployment of hybrid infrastructures (e.g., a mixture of preferred fixed grid and mobile routers) should also be supported by MANET specifications and management features. In the past, this WG has focused on exploring a broad range of MANET problems, performance issues, and related candidate protocols and has developed several EXPERIMENTAL RFCs with associated working prototypes along with an INFORMATIONAL RFC (2501) discussing performance and design considerations.  The present protocol frameworks provide Experimental MANET specifications covering both reactive and proactive design spaces and many of the concepts have reached a significant level of engineering maturity. Building off this work, the MANET WG will now concentrate its scope on developing several Proposed Standard specification efforts. Two central routing protocol approaches will be developed.

- MANET Reactive Routing Protocol (MRRP)
- MANET Proactive Routing Protocol (MPRP)

For this goal, it is expected that MRRP will become a convergence of mature reactive design components.  Likewise, it is expected that MPRP would be a convergence of mature proactive design components.  At this point, the WG has rough consensus that a split between proactive and reactive taxonomies appears sensible from a design complexity and application space perspective. The WG will begin its work with development of protocols along these tracks.  If the WG sees significant commonality among the design spaces common building blocks may be developed.  The WG will develop both IPv4 and IPv6 support within these protocols.  Routing security requirements and issues will also be addressed.

Within the MANET WG, the development of a common ALL_MANET_NODES forwarding protocol building block for use withing a MANET routing area has also been identified as a useful work item.  The potential for the "broadcast storm problem" to arise is exacerbated in a MANET wireless interface scenario, where each node may have a different set of single hop neighbors.  Present MANET routing protocol work has developed a number of flooding optimizations suitable for MANET environments that can reduce significantly the number of redundant transmissions when forwarding packets to ALL_MANET_NODES.  A generic MANET flooding building block can be adapted to a routing protocol instantiation and may also be useful in designing service discovery and autoconfiguration mechanisms within MANET areas.  The MANET WG will develop a generic flooding building block and related instantiations that will be useful for the intended wireless network environments.  

Additional WG items that are to be covered by a small set of INFORMATIONAL documents and possible PROPOSED STANDARD specifications relate to issues of address autoconfiguration, MANET gateway discovery and operation, and network service discovery.  The MANET WG will work with other IETF WGs to determine and support the working of related issues within the appropriate working groups.

Some related work the MANET WG will pay particular attention to will be the OSPF-MANET protocol work within the OSPF WG and the ANS IRTF work that is addressing research topics related to MANET environments.

_______________________________________________
manet mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/manet

---

From: "John Mullen" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 May 2004 08:32:45 -0600

Hi,

We have been working on stochastic models of wireless link behavior and
feel, at this point, that at least some of the fine-grained variability
of received power will bleed through to the MANET routing protocol
layer.  The variability introduced by typical shadowing and multipath
fading has an immense impact on protocol performance.  For example, end
to end delay may be several orders of magnitude greater when fading is
considered than when it is ignored.  At this time, however, this
critical aspect is not widely addressed in the MANET community.  It is
unlikely that reliable MANET protocols can be developed without
considering this effect.  I suggest that the line:

"increased dynamics, due to motion or other factors"

be changed to 

"increased dynamics, due to motion, residual effects of fine-grained
variation in wireless propagation, or other factors"

Thanks,

John Mullen

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of
Joe Macker
Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2004 8:31 AM
To: [email-masked]
Subject: [manet] Draft MANET Problem Statement and Direction

ALL:

This discussion is a little overdue but we have run this draft outline
past the Routing ADs and are posting it here for the WG to kick around.
Within the next 2 weeks we would like to have a reasonable WG framework
to proceed with. I don't think there are many surprises here as the WG
has been openly discussing the next steps for awhile.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------
DRAFT MANET PROBLEM STATEMENT AND DIRECTION 
(REALLY A CHARTER UPDATE)

The purpose of the MANET working group is to standardize IP routing
protocol functionality suitable for wireless routing application within
both static and dynamic topologies. The fundamental problem issues are
that wireless link interfaces have some unique routing interface
characteristics and that node topologies within a wireless routing
region may experience increased dynamics, due to motion or other
factors. The continued proliferation of a wide variety of wireless
device technologies and embedded network devices is opening up new
wireless networking challenges.  MANET specifications fundamentally
provide improved operational IP routing performance for dynamic,
wireless routing regions.  Approaches are intended to be relatively
lightweight in nature and suitable for heterogeneous adaptation across
multiple hardware and wireless environments.

While MANET routing areas may operate in isolation from a larger
connected Internet, a primary focus of the MANET WG is to address use as
a routing technology extension at the edges of an IP infrastructure. The
deployment of hybrid infrastructures (e.g., a mixture of preferred fixed
grid and mobile routers) should also be supported by MANET
specifications and management features. In the past, this WG has focused
on exploring a broad range of MANET problems, performance issues, and
related candidate protocols and has developed several EXPERIMENTAL RFCs
with associated working prototypes along with an INFORMATIONAL RFC
(2501) discussing performance and design considerations.  The present
protocol frameworks provide Experimental MANET specifications covering
both reactive and proactive design spaces and many of the concepts have
reached a significant level of engineering maturity. Building off this
work, the MANET WG will now concentrate its scope on developing several
Proposed Standard specification efforts. Two central routing protocol
approaches will be developed.

For this goal, it is expected that MRRP will become a convergence of
mature reactive design components.  Likewise, it is expected that MPRP
would be a convergence of mature proactive design components.  At this
point, the WG has rough consensus that a split between proactive and
reactive taxonomies appears sensible from a design complexity and
application space perspective. The WG will begin its work with
development of protocols along these tracks.  If the WG sees significant
commonality among the design spaces common building blocks may be
developed.  The WG will develop both IPv4 and IPv6 support within these
protocols.  Routing security requirements and issues will also be
addressed.

Within the MANET WG, the development of a common ALL_MANET_NODES
forwarding protocol building block for use withing a MANET routing area
has also been identified as a useful work item.  The potential for the
"broadcast storm problem" to arise is exacerbated in a MANET wireless
interface scenario, where each node may have a different set of single
hop neighbors.  Present MANET routing protocol work has developed a
number of flooding optimizations suitable for MANET environments that
can reduce significantly the number of redundant transmissions when
forwarding packets to ALL_MANET_NODES.  A generic MANET flooding
building block can be adapted to a routing protocol instantiation and
may also be useful in designing service discovery and autoconfiguration
mechanisms within MANET areas.  The MANET WG will develop a generic
flooding building block and related instantiations that will be useful
for the intended wireless network environments.  

Additional WG items that are to be covered by a small set of
INFORMATIONAL documents and possible PROPOSED STANDARD specifications
relate to issues of address autoconfiguration, MANET gateway discovery
and operation, and network service discovery.  The MANET WG will work
with other IETF WGs to determine and support the working of related
issues within the appropriate working groups.

Some related work the MANET WG will pay particular attention to will be
the OSPF-MANET protocol work within the OSPF WG and the ANS IRTF work
that is addressing research topics related to MANET environments.