Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) are composed of a set of communicating devices which are able to spontaneously interconnect without any pre-existing infrastructure. In such kind of networks, broadcasting becomes an operation of capital importance for the own existence and operation of the network. Optimizing a broadcasting strategy in MANETs is a multi-objective problem targeting three goals: reaching as many devices as possible, minimizing the network utilization, and reducing the duration time of the broadcasting process. In this paper, we study the fine-tuning of broadcasting strategies by using a cellular multi-objective genetic algorithm (cMOGA) which computes a Pareto front of solutions to empower a human designer with the ability of choosing the preferred configuration for the network. We define two formulations of the problem, one with three objectives and another one with two objectives plus a constraint. For our tests, a benchmark of three realistic environments for metropolitan MANETs has been defined. Our experiments using a complex and realistic MANET simulator reveal that cMOGA is a promising approach to solve the optimum broadcasting problem. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.