Mobile ad hoc networks are envisaged to play a vital role in ubiquitous networking owing to their mobility support without relying on infrastructure-based design. Conversely, the same feature makes routing in these networks challenging as compared to the typical wired networks. As a result typical routing protocols designed for wired networks are not appropriate for these networks. A number of routing protocols have emerged over the last few years which can be generally classified as proactive and reactive routing protocols. In this research, we analyze and compare three most important routing protocols from both categories in terms of throughput, end to end delay and packet delivery fraction. This comparison is useful in understanding the requirements and challenges for routing protocols in mobile and ad hoc setting and forms the basis of designing a new routing protocol which we plan to present in future. Our simulation results based on simulations carried out using Network Simulator (NS2) show that Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) protocol gives best performance as compared to Ad-hoc On-demand Distance Vector (AODV) and Destination Sequenced Distance Vector (DSDV) routing protocols when network size is large and node mobility is high.