REFRAHN: A Resilience Evaluation Framework for Ad Hoc Routing Protocols

Abstract

Routing protocols are key elements for ad hoc networks. They are in charge of establishing routes between network nodes efficiently. Despite the interest shown by the scientific community and industry in converting the first specifications of ad hoc routing protocols in functional prototypes, aspects such as the resilience of these protocols remain generally unaddressed in practice. Tackling this issue becomes critical given the increasingly variety of accidental and malicious faults (attacks) that may impact the behaviour exhibited by ad hoc routing protocols. The main objective of this paper is to deepen in the methodological aspects concerning fault injection in routing protocols. As a result, we will design and implement a framework based on the injection of accidental and malicious faults to quantitatively evaluate their impact on routing protocols. This framework, called REFRAHN (Resilience Evaluation FRamework for Ad Hoc routiNg protocols), can be used to (i) reduce the uncertainty about the sources of perturbations in the deployment of ad hoc routing protocols, (ii) design fault-tolerant mechanisms that address and minimise such problems, and (iii) compare and select which is the routing protocol that optimises the performance and robustness of the network.