Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANET) are composed of mobile devices equipped with short range radio capabilities. Commu­nication is possible between devices located in each other's transmission range. Especially in sparse MANETs, node mo­bility leads to frequent network partitioning, which makes typical networking tasks much more difficult. Although we observe an increasing need for partitioning information, the widely used network simulator ns­2 does not support proto­col developers to easily evaluate their protocols concerning network partitioning.

To simplify the evaluation of MANET partition­aware pro­tocols and applications in ns­2, we extend the simulator to provide partitioning information at the simulation time. De­velopers might be interested in using this information to eval­uate their partition­aware protocols and applications and to compare their performance to the optimal case.

Hypergossiping is a partition­aware broadcast protocol for MANETs. Nodes rebroadcast messages upon joining the par­titions that have not yet received these messages. Hypergos­siping uses a heuristic to detect partition joins. We show the feasibility of our approach and the applicability of the parti­tioning information we provide for ns­2 users to compare the performance of our approach to the optimal case.