Reactive Protocols

Ad-hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV) and Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) are two
examples of reactive routing protocols; they build routes to destination nodes only when the
source node does not have a valid (active) route available for data transfer to occur via the
Route Discovery process. Because of this, the sender node will only look for routing paths
when absolutely necessary; the route discovery process must be started by the sender node
before it can begin exchanging data with the receiver node. Since routes are only constructed
when needed, reactive routing systems offer a smaller control overhead, but route discovery
might slow down the MANET.