Design and evaluation of network-based distributed mobility management solution based on PFMIPv6

Abstract

Proxy Mobile IPv6 (PMIPv6) protocol provides IP mobility support to a Mobile User (MU) once it performs a handover from an access router to another. Furthermore, Fast Handover for PMIPv6 (PFMIPv6) protocol has been standardized to improve the handover performance of PMIPv6 in terms of handover latency and packet loss. The limitation of these Centralized Mobility Management (CMM) protocols (e.g., non optimal routes, single point of failure and scalability) has led to the development of Distributed Mobility Management (DMM) paradigm. DMM aims to flat the network architecture by placing the anchor entity dynamically closer to the MU. The DMM solutions can be classified into: host-based DMM, in which MU participates in IP mobility process, and network-based DMM, where IP mobility process is done in the network side without MU involvement. However, existing network-based DMM proposals rely on PMIPv6 protocol which experience high handover latency and packet loss. Thus, we present the design and operation of a proposed network-based DMM solution based on PFMIPv6. We have developed an analytical model to evaluate and compare the handover latency and the packet loss of the proposed network-based DMM solution and IETF networkbased DMM proposal.