The State of Simulation Tools for P2P Networks on Mobile Ad-Hoc and Opportunistic Networks

During the Arab spring and other states of political turbulences, the access to selected servers of large communication sites and even the country-wide internet infrastructure has often been affected by enforced censorship and limited the possible communication tools. In order to overcome this censorship a full mobile decentralized network seems to be a viable option. Even though, through the strong dynamism in this decentralized mobile network, future threats, namely intermittent connectivity, changing topologies, and unreliable end nodes may occur. To handle these threats and to provide the desired functionality, self-organized protocols are necessary. This paper presents a survey on the current status of simulation tools for peer-to-peer (P2P), Opportunistic Networks (OppNet), and Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANET) with the aim to identify a suitable evaluation tool that is capable for combining these three networks and for simulating decentralized mobile networks. This combination will allow us to create a fully decentralized and self-organized system which cannot be blocked e.g. through the influences of political parties.