A Comparative Analysis of Proactive, Reactive and Hybrid Routing Protocols over open Source Network Simulator in Mobile Ad Hoc Network

It is very difficult to pursue research over real-time networks at the meantime implementation of such components are costly. Network simulators reduce this task in real time and accomplish this task with less time and cost. There are many network simulators available in the market like Ns2, Ns3, OMNET++, OPNET, NetSim, QualNet, REAL, J-Sim, SWAN, Jist, and GloMoSiM. Generally, Network simulators are used to analyze network performance and measurement metrics. It has been observed that several standing authors did not compare routing protocols with network simulators in general. This paper presents a comparison of results of NS3 and OMNET++ i. e. open source simulators for analyzing Mobile Ad hoc routing protocols by means of Packet Delivery Ratio, Routing Overhead, Throughput, Average end to end delay and Path Optimality. Further, it was analyzed that which one open source simulator is most fit for research purposes. This research presented proactive, reactive and hybrid routing protocols and compared with both network simulators. Experimental results clearly differentiate the performance differences of selected simulators and help in the selection process for network simulators by salient stakeholders