The benefits of AODV protocol are that it favors the least
congested route instead of the shortest route and it also
supports both unicast and multicast packet transmissions
even for nodes in constant movement. It also responds very
quickly to the topological changes that affects the active
routes. AODV does not put any additional overheads on data
packets as it does not make use of source routing.
The limitation of AODV protocol is that it expects/requires
that the nodes in the broadcast medium can detect each
others’ broadcasts. It is also possible that a valid route is
expired and the determination of a reasonable expiry time is
difficult. The reason behind this is that the nodes are mobile
and their sending rates may differ widely and can change
dynamically from node to node. In addition, as the size of
network grows, various performance metrics begin
decreasing. AODV is vulnerable to various kinds of attacks
as it based on the assumption that all nodes must cooperate
and without their cooperation no route can be established.