Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks (MANETs) are autonomous and decentralized wireless systems. Mobile Ad hoc Network is a collection of mobile nodes in which the wireless links are frequently broken down due to mobility and dynamic infrastructure. Routing is a significant issue and challenge in ad hoc networks. Many Routing protocols have been proposed so far to improve the routing performance and reliability. This research paper describes the characteristics of ad hoc routing protocols Ad-hoc On Demand Distance Vector Routing (AODV), Optimized link State Routing (OLSR), Temporally Ordered Routing Algorithm (TORA), Dynamic Source Routing (DSR), Destination-Sequenced Distance-Vector Routing (DSDV) based on the performance metrics like packet delivery fraction, Average delay, Normalized Routing load, Throughput and Jitter under low mobility and low traffic network as well as under high mobility and high traffic network. Results show that AODV has maximum throughput under low traffic and DSDV has maximum throughput under high traffic. As network becomes dense OLSR, DSR and DSDV perform well in terms of Throughput than AODV and TORA. TORA performs well in dense networks in terms of packet delivery fraction but at the same time Normalized Routing load of TORA is maximum among all the protocols in both the networks. DSDV has least Normalized Routing load in both low and high traffic. OLSR and DSDV give the least Jitter and Average Delay in both networks.