Attempts are being made to connect Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANET) to the Internet infrastructure to fill in the coverage gaps in the areas where WLAN coverage is not available. In the very near future mobile nodes roaming across multiple WLANs and MANETs while continuously maintaining session connectivity, are envisaged. A mobile may connect to a WLAN and then move into an area where the coverage from the WLAN does not exist. There, it may reconfigure itself into ad hoc mode and connect to a MANET. Essential to such seamless mobility is efficient mobility management and handoff support. OLSR IPv6 based MANETs are considered as the coverage extensions. Both Mobile IPv6 (MIPv6) and Hierarchical Mobile IPv6 (HMIPv6) protocol are investigated to support mobility in the Internet. The salient features of MIPv6 or HMIPv6 in such a hybrid network architecture integrating MANET with the Internet are exploited. Extensions to OLSR IPv6 and MIPv6, especially HMIPv6 are designed and implemented to support the cooperation. Two test beds have been built separately for evaluating the performance of MIPv6 and HMIPv6 as the mobility supporting protocols.

Papers:

• Maoning Wang, "MANET Global Connectivity and Mobility Management Using HMIPv6 and OLSR", Master Thesis, School of Computer Science, Carleton University, August. 2002
• L. Lamont, M. Wang, L. Villasenor, etc "Integrating WLANs & MANETs to the IPv6 based Internet", ICC 2003 International Conference on Communications, Anchorage, Alaska, USA, May 11-15, 2003
• L. Lamont, M. Wang, L.Villasenor, etc. "An IPv6 and OLSR based Architecture for Integrating WLANs & MANETs to the Internet", The 5th International Symposium on Wireless Personal Multimedia Communications, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, October 27-30,2002

Software:

• Global connectivity in OLSR MANET software package. This software contains a modified version of OLSR (based on OLSR draft version 3), RADVD, and MIPv6 (MIPL version 0.9) with a patch for MANET connectivity. (Works with 2.4.7 kernels, requires a patch to the kernel, and uses an older version of OLSR).