The DSDV [6] routing protocol is a proactive routing
protocol, described in detail in this paper. It is based on
the Bellman-Ford routing algorithm. Each node in the
network maintains a routing table which contains all
available destinations with associated next hop towards
destination, metric and destination sequence number.
Sequence number presents improvement of DSDV routing
protocol compared to distance vector routing, and it is
used to distinguish stale routes from fresh ones and avoid
formation of route loops.
Routing tables are updated by exchanging the
information between mobile nodes. Each node
periodically broadcasts its routing table to its neighbors.
Broadcasting of the information is done in Network
Protocol Data Units (NPDU) in two ways: a full dump and
an incremental dump. A full dump requires multiple
NPDUs, while the incremental requires only one NPDU to
fit in all the information. A receiving node updates its
table if it has received a better or a new route. When an
information packet is received from another node, node
compares the sequence number with the available
sequence number for that entry. If the sequence number is
larger, entry will be updated with the routing information
with the new sequence number, whereas if the information
arrives with the same sequence number, metric entry will
be required. If the number of hops is smaller than the
previous entry, new information will be updated. Update