AODV HELLO packet

Question

I am currently working on an implementation of AODV protocol, One thing am not clear about is the use of HELLO packets.

Are HELLO packets exchanged even before a route is established or HELLO packets are used to keep an existing route alive ?

Note: Also according to my understanding of AODV RFC 3561, HELLO packets are optional. Is that correct ?

Answer 1

Hello packets used to construct neighbor table for all the nodes. IN AODV you can use Hello packets or Link layer detection to create a neighbor list. in default AODV works with link layer detection. If you want to use hello packets you have to command the below lines in aodv.cc

//#ifndef AODV_LINK_LAYER_DETECTION

//#endif // LINK LAYER DETECTION

now you can verify hello packets operation using your trace files.