ABSTRACT
A Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET) is a collection of wireless mobile nodes forming a network temporarily without
any centralized administration of the mobile networks. Each node in MANET moves arbitrarily making the multi-hop
network topology to change randomly at unpredictable times. Two nodes in such a network can communicate in a
bidirectional manner if and only if the distance between them is at most the minimum of their transmission ranges.
When a node wants to communicate with a node outside its transmission range, a multi-hop routing strategy is used
which involves some intermediate nodes? Because of the movements of nodes, there is a constant possibility of
topology change in MANET. There are several familiar routing protocols like DSDV, AODV, DSR, etc., Which have
been proposed for providing communication among all the nodes in the network? This paper presents a performance
comparison of proactive and reactive protocols AODV, DSDV and DSR based on metrics such as throughput, packet
delivery ratio and average end-to-end delay by using the NS-2 simulator.
Keywords: - MANET, DSDV, DSR, AODV, throughput, packet delivery ratio and average end-to-end delay.