Models for Network Services in Airborne Tactical Networks

The traditional model of client server interaction in network services such as DNS, LDAP, and RTP does not perform well in dynamic MANET environments including airborne tactical networks. In this paper, we evaluate two general mechanisms that may be used for network services in such dynamic MANET environments. The key difference between the two mechanisms is in triggering the search for new servers so that the interruption to server reachability observed by a client is reduced. The first mechanism initiates the search when the route cost increases beyond a threshold. The second mechanism triggers the search when a more sensitive measure such as RTT increases beyond a preset threshold.