Network Conditions Monitoring in the Mockets Communications Framework

Communication between mobile devices in the MANET scenario exhibits significant reliability and performance problems. Traditional communication infrastructures designed for wired networks are not well suited for MANETs because they masquerade network level conditions. In the MANET scenario, instead, there is the need to expose current network conditions to applications, enabling them to adapt their behavior to changes in the quality of the communication links. In the context of a MANET-oriented communication framework (called Mockets), this paper presents a network conditions monitoring component which provides applications with timely and accurate information about communication channel characteristics. In particular, the paper focuses on the measurement of latency, obtained via Round Trip Time measurement, for which it presents three different algorithms. The experimental results show the performances of the different algorithms in a MANET-like emulation environment.