An effective method to mitigate route query floods in MANETs

In multi-hop MANETs, each node acts as an end node as well as a router for other nodes. Routing protocols maybe mis-used to launch denial-of-service attacks. The classic countermeasures by controlling route query rate is difficult to implement when the MANET topology change frequently. In this paper, an effective method to mitigate route query floods is proposed. Each node sets an upper bound number for the storage of the resulting (partial) routes with respect to route queries received from one source node. The simulation results show that, when the bound selected properly, route query floods can be mitigated efficiently. The Packet Deliver Rate (PDR) can reach that without attacks and route overhead can be reduced dramatically. At the same time, the method maintains network throughput when there are no malicious nodes.