Wireless Multihop Internet Access: Gateway Discovery, Routing, and Addressing

This paper investigates the interworking between wireless ad hoc networks and the Internet. In other words, we consider access to the Internet via a multihop wireless network. The heterogenous communication is established with the help of specific access routers, which serve as gateways between the two kinds of networks. We describe the network scenario and its basic protocol architecture. The main part of the paper is a discussion of issues on access router discovery, IPv6 address autoconfiguration of the mobile ad hoc devices, and the routing and addressing procedure in the heterogeneous scenario. Keywords—Wireless ad hoc networking, wireless Internet access, interworking, convergence of wireless and Internet, heterogeneity, addressing, Mobile IPv6, autoconfiguration