Recent research in this area reported that a selective broadcast approach for NWB could possibly lead to a considerable improvement in network-wide broadcast coverage with a small increase in network overhead. Moreover, this approach does not require proactive neighbor discovery and is resilient to mobility. Finally, the solution can be added to virtually all NWB approaches to improve their reliability.

Mobile ad-hoc networks suffer with packet or data loss more than the fixed mobile network systems. The problem is much more complicated as in ad-hoc networks, mobile links are subject to transmission errors and the network topology changes frequently and unpredictably. A packet gets lost due to several transmission errors such as no route to the destination, broken links and network congestions. Network-wide broadcasting is one of main approach used in routing protocols to assist data transfer from one to the other location in ad-hoc networks.

There are different types of flooding or broadcasting techniques which are used by network-wide broadcasting. Each of these flooding or broadcasting techniques has certain benefits and drawbacks in them. As NWB is one fundamental routing operation, it requires more discrete and accurate guidelines to be drawn for routing protocols to decide which flooding mechanism could be best suited in a particular situation. I have little doubt in stating that resolution in an exact form could help us in improving the network efficiency by reducing the packet loss in an active transmission.

For more than 20 years, David Gewirtz, the author of Where Have All The Emails Gone? and The Flexible Enterprise, has analyzed current, historical, and emerging issues relating to technology, competitiveness, and policy. David is the Editor-in-Chief of the ZATZ magazines, is the Cyberterrorism Advisor for the International Association for Counterterrorism and Security Professionals, and is a member of the instructional faculty at the University of California, Berkeley extension. He can be reached at david@zatz.com.