AbstractReactive routing protocols for mobile ad hoc networks reduce the routing cost in high mobility environments where link failures are frequent. However, route discovery in these protocols is typically performedvianetwork‐wide flooding, which consumes a substantial amount of bandwidth and causes a significant latency to data packets. To improve the dynamic source routing (DSR) protocol and overcome these limitations, we propose two optimization techniques,viz. generalized salvaging mechanism and cache maintenance using a distributed topology discovery mechanism through mobile ant‐agents. We show, by simulations, that our contributions improve the DSR performance, and particularly in large scale networks with high mobility and heavy load that cause frequent link failures. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.