An Ad hoc network is a collection of wireless mobile nodes dynamically forming a temporary network without the use of any existing network infrastructure or centralized administration. A number of routing protocols have been implemented in this paper. An attempt has been made to compare the performance of two prominent on - demand reactive routing protocols for mobile Ad hoc networks: Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) and Ad Hoc On - Demand Distance Vector Routing ( AODV ). These simulations are carried out based on the ns network simulator.