Discovery of services and other named resources is expected to be a crucial feature for the usability of mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs). Different types of service discovery architectures are distinguished by the extent that service coordinators (SCs) are implemented in the network. SCs are nodes that hold a central repository for the caching of service attributes and bindings of servers located in its neighborhood. This paper describes and investigates the performance of different

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... s in terms of service availability, messaging overhead and latency. The architectures are analyzed and evaluated based on a large range of parameters. The paper also shows that in an on-demand MANET, where the service discovery mechanism will have a direct impact on the reactive routing protocol, the routing effects influence the evaluation result. It also demonstrates the benefits of combining the service discovery with route discovery, especially in on-demand MANETs where reactive routing protocols are being used.