Security in Wireless Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks

5

Routing

The routing protocol is typically the core of any protocol suite. For example, in the transmission control protocol/Internet protocol (TCP/IP), IP does the routing. Any other protocol in TCP/IP, e.g. ftp, SMTP, TCP, UDP, IGMP, etc, or lower layers, e.g. IEEE 802.11, IEEE 802.3, IEEE 802.16, etc, may or may not be used for transferring data over the Internet. However, every transmission over the Internet has to be encapsulated in an IP packet.

Although our focus is on WASMs, and IP is not always preferred for WASM applications, IP is still important because many WASMs are connected to the Internet. The points where WASMs connect to the Internet can present some exploitation opportunities for security attacks. Also, when a WASM node is communicating with an Internet host, IP packets may be encapsulated in WASM protocols. Moreover, some mesh network applications in particular may be running IP directly. Therefore, we also examine IP in this chapter.

5.1 Internet Protocol and Mobile IP

IP is a link level protocol, i.e. every router demultiplexes the IP header, determines the next router to which the packet will be forwarded according to the parameters in the IP header and encapsulates the IP packet again. The protocols over IP, such as TCP, are end-to-end protocols, which means that their headers are demultiplexed and encapsulated only at the two hosts communicating with each other. IP selects the next router from a routing table which can be updated manually or by the Internet ...