The characteristics of ad hoc networks naturally encourage the deployment of distributed services. Although current networks implement group communication methods, they do not support the needs of a mobile node that must locate one or more distributed servers. A node should not need detailed knowledge of network topology to choose servers with which it can communicate efficiently.To this end, manycast is a group communication scheme that enables communication with an arbitrary (user specified) number of group members. Anycast and multicast communication are special cases of manycast in which the target number of group members is one and infinity, respectively. We present manycast and discuss its use as a communication primitive, with specific attention to ad hoc networks. We advocate manycast support at the network layer. A manycast routing protocol enables an application to contact several nearby network nodes that implement a distributed service.We analyze some approaches to manycast, including some application layer implementations. This evaluation supports our claim that manycast must be implemented in the network layer for effective operation in ad hoc networks. We present several extensions to ad hoc routing protocols that can provide manycast support with minimal implementation effort. Through analysis and extensive simulation, we explore the behavior of these approaches to manycast, finally providing recommendations to implementors.

Mobile ad hoc networks are autonomous, infrastructureless networks that support multihop communication through IP routing. This paper examines the use of mobile IP in order to provide global Internet connectivity to ad hoc networks that use an on-demand routing protocol. We present a hybrid scheme that uses techniques such as TTL scoping of agent advertisements, eavesdropping and caching agent and advertisements to combine the advantages of proactive and reactive approaches to providing connectivity. We present simulation results to show that our approach achieves excellent connectivity while keeping overhead costs low.