Implementation and Experimentation of a layer-2 Architecture for Interconnecting Heterogeneous Ad Hoc Networks to the Internet

A prerequisite for the mass-market deployment of multi-hop ad hoc technologies is the capability of cooperating with existing wired infrastructure networks and providing transparent access to the Internet. However, current solutions to support connectivity between ad hoc networks and the Internet are based on complex mechanisms, such as Mobile- IP and IP tunnelling. In this chapter, we describe a lightweight and efficient architecture to build multi-hop hybrid ad hoc networks (i.e., using both wired and wireless links) employing proactive routing protocols, which can be used as flexible and low-cost extensions of traditional wired LANs. Our proposed architecture provides transparent global Internet connectivity and self-configuration to mobile nodes, without requiring configuration changes in the pre-existing wired LAN and relying only on basic layer-2 functionalities. We have prototyped the core components of this architecture for OLSR-based ad hoc networks. In this chapter, we present several experimental results such as to evaluate the network performance, and to determine an "optimal" setting of the routing protocol parameters.