ABSTRACT
Ad hoc networks are collections of mobile nodes communicating with each other using wireless media without any
fixed infrastructure. During both route discovery and traversal of route-reply packets from destination to source,
broadcast of packets is required which incurs huge message cost. The present article deals with the message cost
reduction during transmission of route-reply from destination to source. Also the redundancy that is visible within
the 2-hop neighborhood of a node is minimized during broadcasting of route-reply. This improves the average
lifetime of network nodes by decreasing the possibility of network partition. The scheme of 2NI can be used with
any reactive routing protocol in MANETs.
Keywords: - Ad hoc networks, Broadcast Balloon, Cost-Effective, Route-request, Route-reply, Two-hop
neighborhood information.