This well-written paper introduces secure time-ordered routing (STOP), a new secure protocol for mobile ad hoc network (MANET) routing that makes use of relative transmission times. The authors’ approach is based on ordering nodes according to the time of reception and transmission of routing packets. STOP uses the concept of selection of paths based on performance, without the knowledge of source routing or full topology, making it quite effective. Simulations of STOP were compared to ad hoc on-demand distance vector (AODV) routing, secure routing through diversity and verification (SRDV), dynamic source routing (DSR), optimized link state routing (OLSR), and authenticated routing for ad hoc networks (ARAN); results show that the improved security does not affect the routing performance.

Overall, I found STOP to be quite an innovative approach, compared to the existing methods of securing routing protocols. Because STOP implements on-demand routing that orders nodes based on the time stamp of the routing packets’ arrival and transmission, an attacker would fail when trying to alter the metrics of link information.

This easy-to-read paper covers security analysis and simulation and provides good details on the STOP protocol, including router discovery and maintenance, performance feedback, data forwarding, authentication, application, and scalability.