A comparative study of topology enabled and topology hiding multipath routing protocols in MANETs

In the past few years, we have seen a rapid expansion in the area of mobile ad hoc networks due to the rapid increase in the number of inexpensive and widely available wireless devices. This type of network, operating as a stand-alone network or with one or multiple points of attachment to cellular networks paves the way for numerous new and exciting applications. MANETs are characterized by a multi-hop network topology that can change frequently due to mobility, efficient routing protocols are needed to establish communication paths between nodes. It is very important that the routing protocol used must provide a well secure routing architecture and should not provide single bit of loop holes. This is pointing towards the topology exposure problem of existing routing protocols and tells about the need of topology hiding. Routing security is one of the hottest research areas in MANET currently. This paper provides insight into a comparative study of well known AOMDV routing protocol with a topology hiding multipath protocol and the need of hiding topology information within the protocol to resist various kinds of attacks such as blackhole attack, Sybil attack and warmhole attack. This paper also discusses the technological challenges that protocol designers and network developers are faced with.