Dynamic Source Routing

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Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) is a routing protocol for wireless mesh networks. It is similar to AODV in that it forms a route on-demand when a transmitting computer requests one. However, it uses source routing instead of relying on the routing table at each intermediate device.

Determining source routes requires accumulating the address of each device between the source and destination during route discovery. The accumulated path information is cached by nodes processing the route discovery packets. The learned paths are used to route packets. To accomplish source routing, the routed packets contain the address of each device the packet will traverse. This may result in high overhead for long paths or large addresses, like IPv6. To avoid using source routing, DSR optionally defines a flow id option that allows packets to be forwarded on a hop-by-hop basis.

This protocol is truly based on source routing whereby all the routing information is maintained (continually updated) at mobile nodes. It has only 2 major phases which are Route Discovery and Route Maintenance. Route Reply would only be generated if the message has reached the intended destination node (route record which is initially contained in Route Request would be inserted into the Route Reply).

To return the Route Reply, the destination node must have a route to the source node. If the route is in the Destination Node's route cache, the route would be used. Otherwise, the node will reverse the route based on the route record in the Route Reply message header (symmetric links). In the event of fatal transmission, the Route Maintenance Phase is initiated whereby the Route Error packets are generated at a node. The erroneous hop will be removed from the node's route cache, all routes containing the hop are truncated at that point. Again, the Route Discovery Phase is initiated to determine the most viable route.

For information on other similar protocols, see the ad hoc routing protocol list.

[edit] External links

DSR Specification
piconet an open source POSIX implementation
Bryan's DSR NS-2 FAQ Deals with the implementation of DSR within the Network Simulator package
Simulation Model for the DSR MANET Routing Protocol
DSR-UU an open source implementation

[edit] References

It was first described in:

David B. Johnson. Routing in Ad Hoc Networks of Mobile Hosts. Proceedings of the Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications, pp. 158-163, IEEE Computer Society, Santa Cruz, CA, December 1994.

Many successive refinements have been made to DSR, including DSRFLOW.