J. ICT Res. Appl., Vol. 8, No. 2, 2014, 113-125 113 Received October 20 th , 2014, Revised November 27 th , 2014, Accepted for publication November 27 th , 2014. Copyright © 2014 Published by ITB Journal Publisher, ISSN: 2337-5787, DOI: 10.5614/itbj.ict.res.appl.2014.8.2.3 Effect of 3 Key Factors on Average End to End Delay and Jitter in MANET Saqib Hakak, Suhaimi Abd. Latif, F. Anwar, M.K. Alam & Gulshan Gilkar Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering International Islamic University Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Email: saqibhakak@gmail.com Abstract. A mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) is a self-configuring infrastructure-less network of mobile devices connected by wireless links where each node or mobile device is independent to move in any desired direction and thus the links keep moving from one node to another. In such a network, the mobile nodes are equipped with CSMA/CA (carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance) transceivers and communicate with each other via radio. In MANETs, routing is considered one of the most difficult and challenging tasks. Because of this, most studies on MANETs have focused on comparing protocols under varying network conditions. But to the best of our knowledge no one has studied the effect of other factors on network performance indicators like throughput, jitter and so on, revealing how much influence a particular factor or group of factors has on each network performance indicator. Thus, in this study the effects of three key factors, i.e. routing protocol, packet size and DSSS rate, were evaluated on key network performance metrics, i.e. average delay and average jitter, as these parameters are crucial for network performance and directly affect the buffering requirements for all video devices and downstream networks. Keywords: AODV; DSSS rate; DYMO; factorial design; MANET; mobile ad-hoc networks; performance evaluation. 1 Introduction A MANET is a multi-hop ad-hoc network that consists of a set of independent mobile nodes and does not require any infrastructure for communication purposes. Since MANETs don’t require any infrastructure and don’t incur any extra costs, this type of network is best suited for temporary purposes like in case of a military emergency, a rescue scenario, a shopping mall scenario, an educational trip scenario and so on. It is a multi-hop type network because mobile nodes have a limited transmission range and thus have to rely on intermediate nodes. Therefore in a MANET each node acts as a router [1],[2].Routing is considered one of the most difficult tasks in MANETs due to the continuously changing network topology, which makes it very difficult to select a particular protocol. Although there are many approaches for routing, all