International Journal of Applied Engineering Research ISSN 0973-4562 Volume 11, Number 6 (2016) pp 3885-3896 © Research India Publications. http://www.ripublication.com 3885 A Comparative Analysis of Proactive, Reactive and Hybrid Routing Protocols over open Source Network Simulator in Mobile Ad Hoc Network Deepshikha Bhatia* Assistant Professor, The IIS University, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India. Prof. Durga Prasad Sharma AMIT, AMU MOE FDRE under UNDP and External Consultant & Adviser (IT), ILO [An autonomous Agency of United Nations], Geneva. Abstract It is very difficult to pursue a research over real time networks at the mean time implementation of such components are costly. Network simulators reduce this task in real time and accomplish this task with less time and cost. There are many network simulators available in the market like Ns2, Ns3, OMNET++, OPNET, NetSim, QualNet, REAL, J-Sim, SWAN, Jist, and GloMoSiM. Generally Network simulators are used to analyze network performance and its measurement metrics. It has been observed that several standing authors did not compare routing protocols with network simulators in general. This paper presents comparison of results of NS3 and OMNET++ i. e. open source simulators for analyzing Mobile Ad hoc routing protocols by means of Packet Delivery Ratio, Routing Overhead, Throughput, Average end to end delay and Path Optimality. Further it was analyzed that which one open source simulator is most fit for research purposes. This research presented proactive, reactive and hybrid routing protocols and compared with both network simulators. Experimental results clearly differentiate the performance differences of selected simulators and helps in selection process for network simulators by salient stakeholders. Keywords: OMNET, NS3, MANET, Network simulators, Routing Protocols. Introduction Simulation is one of the key technologies in today world. The simulation in computer can model the real time concept by using simulator. In recent development real time implementation causes more cost and it consumes more time to implement. For avoiding such situation network simulators are used. There are many types of network simulators on modern world which are differ from their working range. The network simulators providing more benefits and features like reproducibility, setup, easy to deploy, scalability. There are different network simulators with different features. Some of the network simulator are OPNET, NS2, NS3, NetSim, OMNeT++, REAL, J-Sim and QualNet. Mostof the network simulation toolkits are based on the paradigm of the event- driven network simulation. In recent era, the network simulation toolkits are used by academic research, industrial development and guarantying quality. Network simulators are used in research area because of resources, time, giving best performance result and the network simulators are solving the problem of new security implementation. In recent days network simulators are used for designing and analyzing different network protocols. The decentralized structure of mobile nodes may change network topology rapidly and unpredictably is referred as MANET. In Mobile Ad hoc network the mobile nodes are autonomously connected with the wireless link. MANET is a type of Ad hoc network which has routable networking domain. Basically MANET does not have any specific infrastructure. In MANET routing is the process of exchanging information from one node to another node. In routing the messages are transferred towards the destination through the selected efficient path. In MANET the routing protocols are classified into 3 different types as shown in fig 2 which are,  Proactive routing protocols  Reactive routing protocols  Hybrid routing protocols Figure 1: Manet Architecture In proactive routing protocol all the nodes generally stores their information in the form of tables when any change in the network topology happens. As per the change network