Multicast Mobility in Mobile IP Version 6 (MIPv6) : Problem Statement and Brief Survey

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Multicast source mobility support for regenerative satellite networks

YesSatellite communications provides an effective solution to the ever increasing demand for mobile and ubiquitous communications especially in areas where terrestrial communication infrastructure is not present. IP multicasting is a bandwidth saving technology which could become an indispensable means of group communication over satellites since it can utilise the scarce and expensive satellite resources in an efficient way. In Source-Specific Multicast (SSM) the data is sent through a multicast tree from the source to all the receivers. However, if a source is a mobile node moving from one network to another, then special mechanisms are required to make sure this multicast tree does not break. Until now, while many research efforts have been made to provide IP multicast for the mobile nodes, they are mainly focused on terrestrial networks. Unfortunately, the terrestrial mobile multicast schemes are not directly applicable in a satellite environment. This paper, proposes a new mechanism to support multicast source mobility in SSM based applications for a mesh multi-beam satellite network with receivers both within the satellite network and in the Internet. In the proposed mechanism, the SSM receivers continue to receive multicast traffic from the mobile source despite the fact that the IP address of the source keeps on changing as it changes its point of attachment from one satellite gateway (GW) to another. The proposed scheme is evaluated and the results compared with the mobile IP home subscription (MIP HS)-based approach. The results show that the proposed scheme outperforms the MIP HS-based approach in terms of signalling cost and packet delivery cost

Fast Adaptive Routing Supporting Mobile Senders in Source Specific Multicast

IP multicast deployment recently progresses, but group services often remain restricted to limited domains and fail to comply with route-optimizing mobility management of the next generation Internet. Source Specific Multicast (SSM) facilitates transparent inter-domain routing and is expected to globally disseminate to many users and services. However, mobility support for Source Specific Multicast is still known to be a major open problem. In this paper, we propose the Enhanced Tree Morphing (ETM) protocol for extending SSM routing to mobile multicast sources. The scheme dynamically adapts SSM forwarding states to sender mobility, and transforms (morphs) source specific distribution trees into new, optimal trees rooted at a relocated source. ETM is simple, robust and secure, while it admits superior performance in packet forwarding at a low signaling overhead. Extensive evaluations based on a full protocol implementation, and simulations based on real-world topology data are performed, granting full insight into the properties of packet loss and delay stretch, protocol convergence times and router state evolution during single and rapidly repeated handovers. In a constant bit rate scenario, an ETM source handover typically leads to a slightly increasing delay of the first data packet, only. When operating on realistic network topologies, the protocol uniformly converges within less than 50 ms, thereby sustaining robustness under rapid source movement at all speeds common to our mobile world. Further optimizations are identified for FMIPv6 and for multihomed nodes

IP Mobile Multicast over Next Generation Satellite Networks. Design and Evaluation of a Seamless Mobility Framework for IP Multicast Communications over a Multi-beam Geostationary Satellite Network

The inherent broadcast nature of satellites, their global coverage and direct access to a large number of subscribers give satellites unrivalled advantages in supporting IP multicast applications. A new generation of satellite systems that support regenerative on-board processors and multiple spot beam technology have opened new possibilities of implementing IP multicast communication over satellites. These new features enable satellites to make efficient use of their allocated bandwidth resources and provide cost effective network services but equally, create new challenges for mobile satellite terminals. IP mobility support in general and IP mobile multicast support in particular on mobile satellite terminals like the ones mounted on continental flights, maritime vessels, etc., still remain big challenges that have received very little attention from the research community. Up till now, there are no proposed mechanisms to support IP multicast for mobile receivers/sources in multi-beam satellite networks in open literature. This study explores the suitability of IP multicast mobility support schemes defined for terrestrial networks in a satellite environment and proposes novel schemes based on the concepts of Home and Remote subscription-based approaches, multiple interface and PMIPv6 protocol. Detailed analysis and comparison of results obtained from the proposed schemes, Mobile IP (MIP) Home and Remote subscription-based approaches (for terrestrial networks) when implemented on a reference multi-beam satellite network are presented. From these results, the proposed schemes outperform the MIP Home and Remote subscription-based approaches in terms of gateway handover latency, number of multicast packets lost and signalling cost over the satellite air interface