Carver: Efficient Realtime MANET Management

There is currently no commercial-off-the-shelf network-management tool optimized for mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). As a result, MANET administrators are forced to use wired-network management tools that perform badly in the MANET environment. Carver is a MANET management tool comprised of distributed data-collection agents and one or more visualization stations. The data-collection agents logically carve the larger MANET into a set of neighborhoods where local management data is aggregated and subsequently forwarded to the visualization station. Armed with MANET situational awareness provided by Carver, network administrators can make informed decisions about node repositioning and reallocation in order to increase MANET fault tolerance, throughput, and quality of service. The Phase II objective is to implement a TRL 6 prototype of the Carver software that reduces MANET-wide management overhead (in terms of transmitted packets) by 40% of that required for a traditional wired-network management approach.