Simple Techniques for Enhancing the Robustness of DSR

The Dynamic Source Routing protocol for ad hoc networks is one of the leading candidates for adoption by the IETF amongst the class of reactive routing protocols. The currently defined protocol assumes total node cooperation, which allows attacks by failed or malicious nodes whose behaviour violates the protocol rules. Failed nodes will typically fail to forward information; badly failed nodes will inadvertently introduce false routing messages; selfish nodes deliberately refuse to forward packets; finally, malicious nodes may disrupt the network in any possible way. There have been many proposals for securing DSR, most of which introduce major overheads and hence make the protocol less attractive. This paper takes a somewhat different approach and presents some simple techniques aimed at making the protocol more robust with minimal overhead