The area of mobile ad hoc networking has received considerable attention of the research community in recent years. These networks have gained immense popularity primarily due to their infrastructure-less mode of operation which makes them a suitable candidate for deployment in emergency scenarios like relief operation, battlefield etc., where either the pre-existing infrastructure is totally damaged or it is not possible to establish a new infrastructure quickly. However, MANETs are constrained due to the limited transmission range of the mobile nodes which reduces the total coverage area. Sometimes the infrastructure-less ad hoc network may be combined with a fixed network to form a hybrid network which can cover a wider area with the advantage of having less fixed infrastructure. In such a combined network, for transferring data, we need base stations which act as gateways between the wired and wireless domains. Due to the hybrid nature of these networks, routing is considered a challenging task. Several routing protocols have been proposed and tested under various traffic conditions. However, the simulations of such routing protocols usually do not consider the hybrid network scenario. In this work we have carried out a systematic performance study of the two prominent routing protocols: Destination Sequenced Distance Vector Routing (DSDV) and Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) protocols in the hybrid networking environment. We have analyzed the performance differentials on the basis of three metrics - packet delivery fraction, average end-to-end delay and normalized routing load under varying pause time with different number of sources using NS2 based simulation.
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