Computer Science & Engineering: An International Journal (CSEIJ), Vol.1, No.1, March 2011 1           T K Godder 1 , M. M Hossain 2 , M M Rahman 1 , Md. Sipon Miah 1 and S K Mondal 3 1 Dept. of Information & Communication Engineering Islamic University, Kushtia 7003, Bangladesh. 2 Dept. of Applied Physics &Electronic Engineering Rajshahi University, Rajshahi 6205, Bangladesh. 3 Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering Islamic University, Kushtia 7003, Bangladesh E-mail:{tkict, drmahbub_07}@yahoo.com, mdsiponmiah@gmail.com ABSTRACT A mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a wireless network that uses multi-hop peer-to-peer routing instead of static network infrastructure to provide network connectivity. MANETs have applications in rapidly deployed and dynamic military and civilian systems. The network topology in a MANET usually changes with time. Therefore, there are new challenges for routing protocols in MANETs since traditional routing protocols may not be suitable for MANETs. Researchers are designing new MANET routing protocols and comparing and improving existing MANET routing protocols before any routing protocols are standardized using simulations. However, the simulation results from different research groups are not consistent with each other. This is because of a lack of consistency in MANET routing protocol models and application environments, including networking and user traffic profiles. Therefore, the simulation scenarios are not equitable for all protocols and conclusions cannot be generalized. Furthermore, it is difficult for one to choose a proper routing protocol for a given MANET application. According to the aforementioned issues, this paper focuses on MANET routing protocols. Specifically, my contribution includes the characterization of different routing protocols and compare and analyze the performance of different routing protocols. KEYWORDS MANET 1. INTRODUCTION Movements of nodes in a mobile ad hoc network cause the nodes to move in and out of range from one another. As the result, there is a continuous making and breaking of links in the network, making the network connectivity (topology) to vary dynamically with time. Since the network relies on multi-hop transmissions for communication, this imposes major challenges for the network layer to determine the multi-hop route over which data packets can be transmitted between a given pair of source and destination nodes. Because of this time-varying nature of the topology of mobile ad hoc networks, traditional routing techniques, such as the shortest-path and link-state protocols that are used in fixed networks, cannot be directly applied to ad hoc networks. A fundamental quality of routing protocols for ad hoc networks is that they must dynamically adapt to variations of the network topology. This is implemented by devising techniques for efficiently tracking changes in the network topology and rediscovering new