ZAL: Zero-Maintenance Address Allocation in Mobile Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

— The allocation of IP addresses in hybrid wireless networks is one of the most critical issues in all-IP converged wireless networks. The reason is that centralized IP address allocation mechanisms may not be available in networks comprised of heterogeneous mobile wireless devices. In this paper, we propose Zero-Maintenance Address Allocation (ZAL), a fully distributed address allocation algorithm with extremely low communication overhead. ZAL outperforms existing solutions in many important aspects, and eliminates permanent duplication of IP addresses. ZAL is completely free from periodical maintenance messages, timeouts, delays, and modification of existing network protocols. Theoretically, we prove that ZAL suffers negligible probability of temporary address duplication, while minimizing the usage of address space. In our experiments, we can successfully allocate addresses to a network of 480 nodes with no duplication of IP addresses when the size of available address space is 1...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: ICDCS
• Authors: Zhihua Hu, Baochun Li
• Keywords: Address Allocation, Distributed And Parallel Computing, ICDCS 2005, IP Addresses, Temporary Address Duplication