Roaming Real-Time Applications - Mobility Services in IPv6 Networks

Emerging mobility standards within the next generation Internet Protocol, IPv6, promise to continuously operate devices roaming between IP networks. Associated with the paradigm of ubiquitous computing and communication, network technology is on the spot to deliver voice and videoconferencing as a standard internet solution. However, current roaming procedures are too slow, to remain seamless for real-time applications. Multicast mobility still waits for a convincing design. This paper investigates the temporal behaviour of mobile IPv6 with dedicated focus on topological impacts. Extending the hierarchical mobile IPv6 approach we suggest protocol improvements for a continuous handover, which may serve bidirectional multicast communication, as well. Along this line a multicast mobility concept is introduced as a service for clients and sources, as they are of dedicated importance in multipoint conferencing applications. The mechanisms introduced do not rely on assumptions of any specific multicast routing protocol in use.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figure

A Survey on Handover Management in Mobility Architectures

This work presents a comprehensive and structured taxonomy of available techniques for managing the handover process in mobility architectures. Representative works from the existing literature have been divided into appropriate categories, based on their ability to support horizontal handovers, vertical handovers and multihoming. We describe approaches designed to work on the current Internet (i.e. IPv4-based networks), as well as those that have been devised for the "future" Internet (e.g. IPv6-based networks and extensions). Quantitative measures and qualitative indicators are also presented and used to evaluate and compare the examined approaches. This critical review provides some valuable guidelines and suggestions for designing and developing mobility architectures, including some practical expedients (e.g. those required in the current Internet environment), aimed to cope with the presence of NAT/firewalls and to provide support to legacy systems and several communication protocols working at the application layer

Proxy-based Mobile Computing Infrastructure

In recent years, there has been a huge growth in mobile applications. More mobile users are able to access Internet services via their mobile devices e.g., smartphones ans tablets. Some of these applications are highly interactive and resource intensive. Mobile applications, with limited storage capacity, slow processors and limited battery life, could be connected to the remote servers in clouds for leveraging resources. For example, weather applications use a remote service that collects weather data and make this data available through a well-defined API. This represents a static partitioning of functionality between mobile devices and a remote server that is determined at run-time. Regardless of the network distance between the cloud infrastructure and the mobile device, the use of a remote service is well suited for mobile device applications with relatively little data to be transferred. However, long distances between a mobile device and remote services makes this approach unsuitable for applications that require larger amounts of data to be transferred and/or have a high level of interactiveness with the user. This includes mobile video communications (e.g., Skype, Face-Time, Google-Hangout), gaming applications that require sophisticated rendering and cloud media analysis that can be used to offer more personalized services. The latency incurred with this architecture makes it difficult to support real-time and interactive applications. A related problem is that the static partitioning strategy is not always suitable for all network conditions and inputs. For example, let us consider a speech recognition application. The performance depends on the size of the input and the type of connectivity to the backbone. Another challenge is that the communication medium between the mobile application and the remote service includes wireless links. Wireless links are more error prone and have less bandwidth than wired links. Often a mobile application may be disconnected. One approach to addressing these challenges is the use of a proxy. A proxy is computing power that is located at the network edge. This allows it to address problems with latency. It is possible for a proxy to have services that allow for offloading tasks from either the cloud or the mobile device and to deal with communication challenges between the mobile application and the mobile device. This work proposes a proxy-based system that acts as a middleware between the mobile application and the remote service. The proposed middleware consists of a set of proxies that provide services. The proposed middleware includes services for proxy discovery and selection, mechanisms for dealing with balancing loads on proxies and handoff. A prototype was developed to assess the effectiveness of the proposed proxy-based system

Generic Models for Mobility Management in Next Generation Networks

In the network community different mobility management techniques have been proposed over the years. However, many of these techniques share a surprisingly high number of similarities. In this technical report we analyze and evaluate the most relevant mobility management techniques, pointing out differences and similarities. For macro-mobility we consider Mobile IP (MIP), the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and mobility management techniques typical of a GSM network; for micro-mobility we describe and analyze several protocols such as: Hierarchical MIP, TeleMIP, IDMP, Cellular IP and HAWAII

Efficient Micro-Mobility using Intra-domain Multicast-based Mechanisms (M&M)

One of the most important metrics in the design of IP mobility protocols is the handover performance. The current Mobile IP (MIP) standard has been shown to exhibit poor handover performance. Most other work attempts to modify MIP to slightly improve its efficiency, while others propose complex techniques to replace MIP. Rather than taking these approaches, we instead propose a new architecture for providing efficient and smooth handover, while being able to co-exist and inter-operate with other technologies. Specifically, we propose an intra-domain multicast-based mobility architecture, where a visiting mobile is assigned a multicast address to use while moving within a domain. Efficient handover is achieved using standard multicast join/prune mechanisms. Two approaches are proposed and contrasted. The first introduces the concept proxy-based mobility, while the other uses algorithmic mapping to obtain the multicast address of visiting mobiles. We show that the algorithmic mapping approach has several advantages over the proxy approach, and provide mechanisms to support it. Network simulation (using NS-2) is used to evaluate our scheme and compare it to other routing-based micro-mobility schemes - CIP and HAWAII. The proactive handover results show that both M&M and CIP shows low handoff delay and packet reordering depth as compared to HAWAII. The reason for M&M's comparable performance with CIP is that both use bi-cast in proactive handover. The M&M, however, handles multiple border routers in a domain, where CIP fails. We also provide a handover algorithm leveraging the proactive path setup capability of M&M, which is expected to outperform CIP in case of reactive handover.Comment: 12 pages, 11 figure

A network mobility management architecture for a heteregeneous network environment

Network mobility management enables mobility of personal area networks and vehicular networks across heterogeneous access networks using a Mobile Router. This dissertation presents a network mobility management architecture for minimizing the impact of handoffs on the communications of nodes in the mobile network. The architecture addresses mobility in legacy networks without infrastructure support, but can also exploit infrastructure support for improved handoff performance. Further, the proposed architecture increases the efficiency of communications of nodes in the mobile network with counter parts in the fixed network through the use of caching and route optimization. The performance and costs of the proposed architecture are evaluated through empirical and numerical analysis. The analysis shows the feasibility of the architecture in the networks of today and in those of the near future.Verkkojen liikkuuvudenhallinta mahdollistaa henkilökohtaisten ja ajoneuvoihin asennettujen verkkojen liikkuvuuden heterogeenisessä verkkoympäristössä käyttäen liikkuvaa reititintä. Tämä väitöskirja esittää uuden arkkitehtuurin verkkojen liikkuvuudenhallintaan, joka minimoi verkonvaihdon vaikutuksen päätelaitteiden yhteyksiin. Vanhoissa verkoissa, joiden infrastruktuuri ei tue verkkojen liikkuvuutta, verkonvaihdos täytyy hallita liikkuvassa reitittimessa. Standardoitu verkkojen liikkuvuudenhallintaprotokolla NEMO mahdollistaa tämän käyttäen ankkurisolmua kiinteässä verkossa pakettien toimittamiseen päätelaitteiden kommunikaatiokumppaneilta liikkuvalle reitittimelle. NEMO:ssa verkonvaihdos aiheuttaa käynnissä olevien yhteyksien keskeytymisen yli sekunnin mittaiseksi ajaksi, aiheuttaen merkittävää häiriötä viestintäsovelluksille. Esitetyssä arkkitehtuurissa verkonvaihdon vaikutus minimoidaan varustamalla liikkuva reititin kahdella radiolla. Käyttäen kahta radiota liikkuva reititin pystyy suorittamaan verkonvaihdon keskeyttämättä päätelaitteiden yhteyksiä, mikäli verkonvaihtoon on riittävästi aikaa. Käytettävissa oleva aika riippuu liikkuvan reitittimen nopeudesta ja radioverkon rakenteesta. Arkkitehtuuri osaa myös hyödyntää infrastruktuurin tukea saumattomaan verkonvaihtoon. Verkkoinfrastruktuurin tuki nopeuttaa verkonvaihdosprosessia, kasvattaenmaksimaalista verkonvaihdos tahtia. Tällöin liikkuva reitin voi käyttää lyhyen kantaman radioverkkoja, joiden solun säde on yli 80m, ajonopeuksilla 90m/s asti ilman, että verkonvaihdos keskeyttää päätelaitteiden yhteyksiä. Lisäksi ehdotettu arkkitehtuuri tehostaa kommunikaatiota käyttäen cache-palvelimia liikkuvassa ja kiinteässä verkossa ja optimoitua reititystä liikkuvien päätelaitteiden ja kiinteässä verkossa olevien kommunikaatiosolmujen välillä. Cache-palvelinarkkitehtuuri hyödyntää vapaita radioresursseja liikkuvan verkon cache-palvelimen välimuistin päivittämiseen. Heterogeenisessä verkkoympäristossä cache-palvelimen päivitys suoritetaan lyhyen kantaman laajakaistaisia radioverkkoja käyttäen. Liikkuvan reitittimen siirtyessä laajakaistaisen radioverkon peitealueen ulkopuolelle päätelaitteille palvellaan sisältöä, kuten www sivuja tai videota cache-palvelimelta, säästäen laajemman kantaman radioverkon rajoitetumpia resursseja. Arkkitehtuurissa käytetään optimoitua reititystä päätelaitteiden ja niiden kommunikaatiokumppaneiden välillä. Optimoitu reititysmekanismi vähentää liikkuvuudenhallintaan käytettyjen protokollien langattoman verkon resurssien kulutusta. Lisäksi optimoitu reititysmekanismi tehostaa pakettien reititystä käyttäen suorinta reittiä kommunikaatiosolmujen välillä. Esitetyn arkkitehtuurin suorituskyky arvioidaan empiirisen ja numeerisen analyysin avulla. Analyysi arvioi arkkitehtuurin suorituskykyä ja vertaa sitä aikaisemmin ehdotettuihin ratkaisuihin ja osoittaa arkkitehtuurin soveltuvan nykyisiin ja lähitulevaisuuden langattomiin verkkoihin.reviewe

Survey Paper: Mobility Management in Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

AbstractEver increasing user demands and development of modern communication technologies have led to the evolution of communication networks from 1st Generation (1G) network to 4G heterogeneous networks. Further, 4G with heterogeneous network environment will provide features such as, “Always Best Connected”, “Anytime Anywhere” and seamless communication. Due to diverse characteristics of heterogeneous networks such as bandwidth, latency, cost, coverage and Quality of Service (QoS) etc., there are several open and unsolved issues namely mobility management, network administration, security etc. Hence, Designing proficient mobility management to seamlessly integrate heterogeneous wireless networks with all-IP is the most challenging issue in 4G networks. Mobile IPv6 (MIPv6) developed by Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has mobility management for the packet-switched devices of homogeneous wireless networks. Further, mobility management of homogeneous networks depends on network related parameter i.e., Received Signal Strength (RSS). However the mobility management of heterogeneous networks, not only depends on network related parameters, but also on terminal-velocity, battery power, location information, user-user profile & preferences and service-service capabilities & QoS etc. Designing mobility management with all-IP, while, considering issues such as context of networks, terminal, user and services is the main concern of industry and researchers in the current era