Abstract
Peer-to-Peer (P2P) file sharing systems as well as mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) possess the same decentralized nature. However P2P and MANETs operate on different network layers, a combination of both appears to be promising. In this paper, we study the use of mobile agents for locating documents asynchronously in this environment, and compare it to its counterpart of locating document synchronously. We are interested in locating more documents even if this takes a longer time. Meanwhile, we do not want to flood the network with requests, or misuse the resources at its nodes. The performance of the system is analyzed by simulating an ad-hoc network, studying the characteristics of this network and comparing it using both synchronous and asynchronous approaches in locating documents. The asynchronous approach shows more success in locating far-from-reach documents, while maintaining a very reasonable level of network traffic and resource consumption.