Performance analysis of routing protocols and TCP variants under HTTP and FTP traffic in MANET's

ABSTRACT: MANET stands for mobile ad-hoc network that has multi-hop and dynamic nature, where each station changes its location frequently and automatically configures itself. Nodes can move freely in MANET while transmitting and receiving the data traffic by using wireless radio waves. Hence, nodes mobility in MANET requires a routing mechanism to communicate with each other. Additionally MANET experiences several types of delays and losses which may not be related to congestions. Appropriate precaution has to be taken for assessing such losses and distinguishing them from congestion losses, so that TCP can be sensitive while invoking the congestion control mechanism. In this thesis, four routing protocols that are optimized link state routing (OLSR), geographic routing protocol (GRP), dynamic source routing (DSR), and ad-hoc on-demand distance vector (AODV) are discussed along with three TCP variants that are SACK, New Reno and Reno. The main focus of this thesis is to study the impact of high, medium and low traffic load on routing protocols and TCP variants. The thesis also analyzes the performances of routing protocols and TCP variants on other environmental conditions such as scalability and mobility. The results of the thesis show that the proactive protocols OLSR and GRP outperform the reactive protocols AODV and DSR with the same nodes size, nodes speed, and traffic load. On the other hand, regarding the TCP variants, the results of the research reveal the superiority of the TCP SACK variant over the other two variants in case of adapting to varying network size, while the TCP Reno variant acts more robustly in varying mobility speeds and traffic loads. Keywords: MANET, routing protocols, TCP variants, performance evaluation, network load. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………