Trust-Based Adaptive Gateway Discovery in Integrated Internet-MANET: A Review of Mechanisms, Trust Models and Open Issues

Abstract

An integrated Internet-MANET lets mobile nodes reach the Internet through gateways, and the mechanism by which a node finds and chooses a gateway has a large effect on delivery, delay and overhead. Adaptive versions of this mechanism adjust the advertisement range and interval to the network, but they treat every node as cooperative, which is not true in an open network where nodes drop packets or send false information. This paper reviews gatewaydiscovery and its adaptive variants, the attacks that threaten them, and the trust models that can be used against these attacks. It then organises the design space of trust-based adaptive gateway discovery into four dimensions: the discoverymechanism,theselectionmetric,thetrustevidence and the attack resilience. Algorithms for trust-awaregateway selection and for trust-weighted aggregation of recommendations are given as a reference design, and the open issues are collected: newcomers, on-off behaviour, false recommendations, the overhead of evidence, the integration of trust with the adaptation of the advertisement range, and the lack of common benchmarks. The review is intended as a starting point for researchers who work on secure Internet connectivity for mobile ad hoc networks.

Introduction

trust-based adaptive gateway discovery in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs), focusing on how mobile devices can access the Internet securely and reliably through gateways despite node mobility and malicious behaviour.

MANETs allow devices to communicate without fixed infrastructure, while gateways connect them to the Internet. Gateway discovery can be proactive, reactive, or hybrid. Proactive discovery reduces connection delay but creates continuous network overhead; reactive discovery reduces unnecessary overhead but increases initial delay; and hybrid discovery combines both approaches. Adaptive gateway discovery improves efficiency by adjusting advertisement ranges, intervals, or both according to network traffic, mobility, and load.

However, conventional gateway discovery methods often assume that all nodes cooperate. Malicious or unreliable nodes may drop packets, send fake advertisements, suppress genuine advertisements, or manipulate trust recommendations. The paper therefore reviews trust-management techniques, including watchdog monitoring, CONFIDANT, CORE, and the Beta reputation model, which help nodes evaluate the reliability of other nodes using direct observations and recommendations.

The review proposes a trust-based adaptive gateway discovery framework that incorporates trust into gateway selection, advertisement forwarding, advertisement-range and interval adaptation, and registration and load balancing. Its reference gateway-selection algorithm evaluates the trustworthiness of routes and chooses the shortest route among those that satisfy a predefined trust threshold. If no route meets the threshold, it selects the route with the highest trust. This approach aims to balance network efficiency with reliable packet delivery.

The paper also discusses implementation challenges, including inaccurate trust assessments caused by mobility, malicious recommendations, Sybil attacks, on-off behaviour, and the energy and communication overhead of monitoring. It recommends evaluating proposed schemes using metrics such as packet delivery ratio, end-to-end delay, control overhead, attack detection rate, false-positive rate, and gateway-switching frequency.

Conclusion

Gateway discovery in an integrated Internet-MANET has been refined for years with respect to overhead and delay, but it still assumes cooperative nodes. This review put gateway discovery, its adaptive variants, the threats and the trust models in one frame. The design space has four dimensions, trust can enter a scheme at five points, and a reference algorithm for the selection of a gateway from path trust was given. The main open issues are the treatment of newcomers, on-off behaviour and false recommendations, the cost of evidence, and the joint adaptation of the advertisement parameters and of the trust parameters. We expect the combination of adaptive gateway discovery and trust management to remain an active topic as networks of mobile devices grow.

References

[1] A. Hamidian, U. Körner, and A. Nilsson, “Performance of Internet access solutions in mobile ad hoc networks,” in Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 3427. Berlin, Germany: Springer, 2005, pp. 189–201. [2] R. U. Zaman, K. U. R. Khan, and A. V. Reddy, “A survey of adaptive gateway discovery mechanisms in heterogeneous networks,” Int. J. Computer Network and Information Security, vol. 2013, no. 7, pp. 34–42, 2013. [3] P. M. Ruiz and A. F. Gomez-Skarmeta, “Maximal source coverage adaptive gateway discovery for hybrid ad hoc networks,”in Ad-Hoc, Mobile, and Wireless Networks (Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 3158). Berlin, Germany: Springer, 2004, pp. 28–41. [4] P. M. Ruiz and A. F. Gomez-Skarmeta, “Adaptive gateway discovery mechanisms to enhance Internet connectivity for mobilead hoc networks,” Ad Hoc & Sensor Wireless Networks, vol. 1, no. 1–2, pp. 159–177, 2005. [5] R. U. Zaman, S. S. Begum, K. U. R. Khan, and A. V. Reddy, “Efficient adaptive path load balanced gateway management strategies for integrating MANET and the Internet,” Int. J. Wireless and Microwave Technologies, no. 2, pp. 57–75, 2017. [6] R. U. Zaman, H. M. Alam, and K. U. R. Khan, “Improvement of adaptive load balanced gateway discovery protocol in hybrid integrated Internet-MANET,” Int. J. Interactive Mobile Technologies, vol. 11, no. 3, 2017. [7] J.-H. Cho, A. Swami, and I.-R. Chen, “A survey on trust management for mobile ad hoc networks,” IEEE Commun. Surveys Tuts., vol. 13, no. 4, pp. 562–583, 2011. [8] C. Perkins, E. Belding-Royer, and S. Das, “Ad hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV) routing,” RFC 3561, IETF, July 2003. [9] Y. Sun, Z. Han, W. Yu, and K. J. R. Liu, “Attacks on trust evaluation in distributed networks,” in Proc. Conf. Information Sciences and Systems (CISS), 2006, pp. 1461–1466. [10] K. Hoffman, D. Zage, and C. Nita-Rotaru, “A survey of attack and defense techniques for reputation systems,” ACM Comput. Surv., vol. 42, no. 1, 2009. [11] S. Marti, T. J. Giuli, K. Lai, and M. Baker, “Mitigating routing misbehavior in mobile ad hoc networks,” in Proc. 6th Annu. Int. Conf. Mobile Computing and Networking (MobiCom), 2000. [12] S. Buchegger and J.-Y. Le Boudec, “Performance analysis of the CONFIDANT protocol,” in Proc. ACM Int. Symp. Mobile Ad Hoc Networking and Computing (MobiHoc), 2002, pp. 226–236. [13] P. Michiardi and R. Molva, “CORE: A collaborative reputation mechanismtoenforcenodecooperationinmobileadhocnetworks,” inAdvancedCommunicationsandMultimediaSecurity,IFIPvol. [14] 100.Boston, MA:Springer, 2002,pp. 107–121. [15] A.JøsangandR.Ismail,“TheBetareputationsystem,”inProc. Bled Electronic Commerce Conf., Bled, Slovenia, June 2002. [16] Y. L. Sun, W. Yu, Z. Han, and K. J. R. Liu, “Information theoretic framework of trust modeling and evaluation for ad hoc networks,”IEEEJ.Sel.AreasCommun.,vol.24,no.2,pp.305–315, 2006. [17] A. Jøsang, R. Ismail, and C. Boyd, “A survey of trust and reputation systems for online service provision,” Decision Support Systems, vol. 43, no. 2, pp. 618–644, 2007. [18] I.-R. Chen, J. Guo, F. Bao, and J.-H. Cho, “Trust management in mobile ad hoc networks for bias minimization and application performance maximization,” Ad Hoc Networks, vol. 19, pp. 59–74, 2014. [19] R. U. Zaman and R. Sultana, “Identifying trustworthy nodes in an integrated Internet MANET to establish a securecommunication,” in Advances in Intelligent Systems andComputing, vol. 712. Singapore: Springer, 2018, p. 321 ff. [20] R. U. Zaman, A. V. Reddy, M. A. Raheem, and K. U. R. Khan, “Contemporary trust management strategies for establishing secure communicationintheheterogeneousnetwork,”Int.J.Sci.Res.Rev., vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 2075–2093, 2019. [21] G.F.RileyandT.R.Henderson,“Thens-3networksimulator,” in Modeling and Tools for Network Simulation. Berlin, Germany: Springer, 2010, pp. 15–34.

Copyright

Copyright © 2026 Mohammed Abdul Raheem, Khaleel Ur Rahman Khan. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.