The effect of DAD timeout period on address autoconfiguration in wireless ad-hoc networks

Abstract

Lack of manual management mechanisms in wireless ad-hoc networks means that automatic configuration of IP addresses and other related network parameters are very crucial. Many IP address autoconfiguration mechanisms have been proposed in literature. These approaches can be categorized as either being stateful or stateless. Stateless protocols employ a Duplicate Address Detection (DAD) mechanism during the auto-configuration process. Using this mechanism, new nodes generate their own IP address and broadcast a request packet and set a timer (DAD timeout). When the DAD timeout expires before any node using the requested IP address responds, the new node configures itself. A long period might result in unnecessary delays whilst, a short delay may result in duplicate addresses. Some solutions resort to repeating DAD for two or three times to guard against message losses that might result in assigning duplicate addresses. In this paper we assess the effect of DAD timeout period on the Duplicate Address Detection. This paper also attempts to get the optimum DAD timeout period.